Hard Things Are Hard

One of the things that got me by surprise in my early twenties was just how hard it was going to be to get the good outcomes I wanted in life.

Of course, I have always known that there was going to be some difficulty in life, but I had severely underestimated it. This caught me completely by surprise.

What I had considered a long and grueling sixteen years in the education system was nothing compared to what reality began throwing at me right from my first day as a graduate. My first lesson was going to be that anything I wanted out of life would come only through hard struggle - and that life itself was going to be one big and daunting quest.

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However, one defining characteristic of our generation is that we have been conditioned for ease. We want things easy, and we want them right now.

However, like me, most young people severely underestimate the sheer challenge that life entails.

During our school years, we eagerly look forward to the promised glory days of the future when we can finally break free of the tyranny of routine and the constant buggering by our teachers.

To a typical African teenager, the education system is a prison they cannot wait to be released from. To them, real-life promises the ultimate paradise - fat monthly salaries, weekend parties, and at least twelve hours of sleep.

Interestingly, though, this is the first lie that we have to unlearn in our twenties, and in the hard way.

What do I want?

It did not take me long to realize that I did not know what I wanted, nor what I should want in the first place.

A couple of months after graduation, I learned pretty fast that I wasn’t going to be working a forty-hour-week, six-figure job anytime soon, and that perhaps twenty-five was a bit too soon to be cruising in a Benz.

Had you told me that worthwhile things like these are hard to get and that they do not come fast or easy, I would have thought you were insane. ‘Of course, life owes a smart, well-intentioned, and even much-liked person like me good stuff,’ I would say. Boy was I wrong!

Our childhood dreams are usually vague and corny. As you begin to understand the world better, however, it dawns on you that it is not achieving your dreams that is difficult, but rather it is knowing what dreams to dream in the first place.

In your twenties, you begin to develop a more nuanced understanding of yourself: your strengths and your weaknesses.

It was humbling to begin to admit my natural deficiencies and the implications they would have on my life.

But it was equally emboldening to come to an understanding of the inexhaustible range of my capabilities and potential.

Armed with this awareness, you begin to have glimpses of what dreams to dream, this time not as mere childhood wishes, but as concrete ambitions.

There are four fundamental ways in which the reality I have come to know contrasts with what I was taught to expect:

Non-linear

First, I was taught to expect linearity when life is, in fact, non-linear.

There is a scene in Francis Imbuga’s play Betrayal in the City in which Boss tells Mulili to tell Regina that, ‘Life is not a straight line’. We seem to know this as a fact but we live as if it is not true.

I was taught that if I just do the right things in the right order, then life will unfold before me like a red carpet. I had been conditioned to think that in the real world, like in the alphabet, A always comes before B, and B before C. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Life has twists and tumbles. Sometimes the first are last and the last are first. Breaking free from the lie of linearity gives one a more accurate perspective of reality.

Complexity

Second, I was not prepared for the sheer complexity of life. I had always thought of reality as simple.

But I have come to learn that life is a multivariate equation for which there is no one correct answer. It is not a thread but a tapestry, entangled and unending.

I wasted precious time in my early twenties attempting to ‘simplify’ my life. I forgot that life does not constitute singular events but intricately interrelated systems and processes. I wrongly believed that if I could just dispense with as many variables as possible, I could figure it out. I am naturally not fond of complexity. I prefer all my ducks in a row.

I was mistaken.

Error

Third, reality makes a fundamental demand for error.

Life is an ongoing experiment for which there is no template or cheat sheet. I grew up with the misled idea that if I tread carefully enough I will never need to be putting out fires.

But I quickly realized that there is no surer way to become useless in the world than to try to tread too carefully. If I am not making any mistakes, I am probably not doing anything interesting with my life.

This is in addition to the fact that the cost of error increases with age. We pay more for our mistakes and missteps the older we become. That is a double tragedy.

However, the fact that life makes mistakes costlier does not create an incentive to avoid them.

Unpredictability

Lastly, I severely underestimated the sheer unpredictability of outcomes in reality.

From a mathematics standpoint, it is safe to say that life is an expression, not an equation. There is no set of variables that if balanced in the right way give a precise, predetermined outcome.

I had considered reality a brief sprint with a clear goal when, in fact, it was a Zumba dance for which I had to make up the steps as the music rolled on.

I am not entitled to outcomes.

Identifying too strongly with the outcomes creates anxiety and steals the present moment from me.

However, learning to accept my limitations and blindness concerning the future frees me to focus on the choices and actions that matter at the moment.

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The realization that things were going to be much harder as an adult than I thought brought about the awareness of my limited understanding of life. For the first time, I felt small and incapable. My sheer inexperience was made explicit as I faced problems for which I was poorly prepared.

My primal reaction was to freeze at the sheer impossibility of the situations that came my way. I would encounter a mountain of a problem, and rather than coming up with ways to get around it, I would stand there, clueless.

Being poorly equipped as a problem solver was perhaps my biggest shortcoming in my early twenties. Like most of my peers, I had a brain full of memorized facts and a strong gift of creativity but a lame ability to work around real problems. 

That would become one of my costliest shortfalls as I entered a world of complex, unending challenges.  

Hesitation complex

The result was an acute hesitation complex.

Whenever a problem that needed solving arose, I shelved it rather than face it. Like many other young people, I was the proverbial ostrich that buries his head in the sand.

I came to realize later that this hesitation was largely due to the fear of being wrong. I had ingrained the lie that I had always to be right, and that error was learned proof of weakness, and therefore unwelcome in any form.

I lost time drooling over the perfect solution. A person can stay stuck at a crossroads in life for lacking the courage to face a difficult choice. Obsession with the perfect outcome creates decision inertia.

However, embracing the possibility of being wrong gives you the freedom to be bold.

Problems are okay - and necessary

My way out came in learning that what seem like big problems in life are just small problems stacked together. I did not have to try to jump over the mountain in one leap when I could scale it step by step. Manageable steps taken incrementally and consistently can overcome mountains.

The value of iteration of action is one of the most important lessons I have learnt.

But more important than learning to solve complex problems is developing a good relationship with them.

Things are hard, and that is what makes life full. We seem to know as a matter of fact that problems will always be a part of life yet we do our best to avoid that fact. And the more I try to run away from problems in life, the faster they catch up.

A better perspective is accepting that life will challenge you in one way or the other. Human beings are meant to face and contend with reality; it is the price we pay for our consciousness.

We are designed to think through problems, solve them, and create something worthwhile out of them. Problems are not a technical fault to be avoided, but a reality to be embraced.

Because when we pray for greatness in life, God gives us hard problems to solve.