Becoming Hard

Someone asked me recently if I wanted to do “75 days hard” with them, and I said “sure, right after I’m done with my 75 years soft.”

Why are people doing this? This has to be the greatest grift going in society. “Alright look people… if you just continue to make your life more difficult, more full of pain, and more littered with suffering, I swear you’re gonna feel, like… so much better. No no no, trust me. This is what you want. You want to be hard. You want to be calloused. You want to be made of stone. Impenetrable! Static, stoic, and stern! Follow me on this path, for you will soon be entirely insufferable! Lacking all finer feelings, unable to experience true joy, and completely closed off from experiencing genuine love, you will have finally made it! Alas. Gather here, ye hardened humans and let’s celebrate our grit and cherish the grind! Harder, harder, harder! You must work hard! Everything has to be hard, so you can be hard! Then you can walk around stiff and serious, knowing that you’re better than everyone else! This is life, dammit! It must be made serious! If we’re not miserable, how do we know we’re anything at all?! Through strife we will strive! Let’s make things continually worse so we can know we’re better! AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

We’ve been had. The beauty of a great grift, a subtle swindle, a pernicious pimp job… is that it’s right in front of your face and you never even see it. We’ve been robbed in broad daylight. The lights are on, but the cameras are off. Whoosh. In and out went the thieves for we thought they were only shoppers.

The genius in this ruse plays upon the human ego like a fiddle, concocting a careful melody for our wicked waltz. What we fail to realize is that our incessant need to be better is reliant on somebody else being worse. Better only exists in contrast to worst. You can’t just be “better” in a vacuum. You must be better than… Better than that guy over there, better than your co-workers, better than who you used to be.

But what does it mean to be better? Who is defining what “better” is? Is it you, or have we simply come to accept certain modes of experience as better because that’s just the way it’s always been? We tend to associate better with more. More money, more friends, more houses, more muscle, more knowledge, more skills… More = better, right? Sure, if that’s how you want to see it.

But this is nothing more than a judgement. We are making ourselves the judges of better and worse, placing more on the side of better and less on the side of worse. More comes with all sorts of problems because there’s so much of it. More houses equal more taxes, more to clean, more to safekeep, more to manage, etc etc. Is it better, or just more? Depends on who’s looking at it, I suppose.

All of this is to say that “better” is simply a matter of opinion. The fault in this is that if we define more as better and we are seeking more in order to be better, we have placed ourselves in a place of lack. I, in lack of more, seek it. This causes us to perceive ourselves as less than, so we are vulnerable to anyone who comes along and paves a path towards better. It’s really the ultimate gaslight. “I’m going to make you feel worse by telling you that you need to be better, and then ask you to follow me or pay me on this journey.”

But this person, this guru, this motivator, this coach, this leader… they are the one who has created the conundrum. By convincing you that you need to be better, they have defined you as worse, and allowed you to accept this definition. Now, because you subconsciously have defined yourself as worse, you must seek better. And oh wow! Would you look at this! This guy happens to be right here, and he’s going to help me be better.

Got ‘em again.

- Butternut Billycream

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