I know the actual saying is “nothing good comes easy,” but I think it should be amended. For one thing, despite the fact that I’m generally a cynical pessimist, I’m still a dreamer who holds out hope for all sorts of unlikely things. Additionally, I have proof that at least once, something good came easy.
About twelve years ago, I fell in love with a suede jacket. It caught my eye one day on a casual stroll through a shop. It was a simple, classic cut in a gorgeous warm camel color and “buttery soft” does not begin to describe the texture. I loved it so much that I tried it on, despite knowing what a huge mistake that would be. I was right – it fit perfectly, which made me love it even more. Sadly, by no stretch of my imagination or my wallet, could I afford a $350 jacket. I was forced to leave the perfect jacket behind. I returned to the store a few times over the next couple months, each time gazing longingly at the jacket while I purchased more practical and much less expensive items like work pants and blouses. One day, I went to the store to return something. My options were a cash refund or a store credit. I decided to browse a bit to see if there was something else I wanted. I was sure the perfect jacket was gone by that time, but I glimpsed a bit of camel color peeking out of the sale rack. Sure enough, one perfect jacket remained and it was my size. I couldn’t believe my luck. I checked the price tag – 50% off! The store was also having a 25% off sale that day, which meant the jacket was 75% off the original price. AND, I had the store credit, which brought my out of pocket cost for the perfect jacket down to about $30. More than a decade later, I still have the jacket. I still wear it regularly and I still love it. It’s the sort of classic “investment piece” I would have been happy to pay full price for, had I been able to afford it. But I didn’t have to! So there you have it – ONE example of something very good that came very easy. Oh-so-good. Oh-so-easy.
Why can’t more things in life be like the easily acquired perfect jacket? The vast majority of the time, I find that very good things don’t come so easy. In fact, most everything in life is much, much harder than I ever imagined it would be. It isn’t like I’m opposed to hard work. On the contrary, I think most people who know me well would say that I have an extremely strong work ethic. And I certainly don’t want this to come across as whiny. My thoughts here are not so much complaint as they are commentary on my profound naiveté.
Life is harder than I thought it would be, but it is also better than I thought it would be. I have a wonderful life. It has been constructed and is held together with a fair amount of luck, lots of support from family and friends, and a ton of on-going work on my part. Marriage, home-ownership, financial stability, parenting, career – all harder than I thought they would be. I’m not sure why I ever expected things to be easy. Maybe it was the first few gold stars that appeared on the tops of my elementary school assignments that conditioned me. I don’t remember having to work very hard for those and I think I got addicted to the shine of the star and the pat on the head that said “very good, Ronda, very good!”
People are always talking about how hard marriage is. “Marriage is the hardest thing you’ll ever do,” they say. Well, I just celebrated my tenth wedding anniversary and I can report that they are both right and wrong. Right that it is hard. Wrong that it is the hardest. Parenting is the hardest, hands down, but more on that later. I recall hearing the “marriage is hard” speech, nodding, smiling and thinking, “Oh how sad! Your relationship must not be as wonderful and magical as mine.” (I told you I was naïve.) Well, now I’m one of those people who have been married for a while and, like everyone else in that club, I know it can actually be pretty hard. And not just in petty ways like “he drives me nuts because he mixes darks and lights in the laundry, and is apparently unable to put shoes away.” This is a bit of a digression, but speaking of inability to put shoes away, I’m starting to just accept it as a male genetic deficiency. I have a lovely coffee table in my living room that apparently sings out to be utilized as boy shoe storage. I believe the coffee table is speaking in tones inaudible to the female ear because I do not hear it saying, “Please, please, put your shoes under me!” as other members of my family do. The laundry room shoe rack remains sadly vacant while an array of boy shoes congregate under the coffee table. It’s a good thing the shoes are so cute, gigantic and tiny, sitting side by side, otherwise I would be unable to resist the urge to bludgeon the wearers with their respective shoes.
Owning a house is hard. The whole white picket fence business is a bunch of crap. In fact, I don’t even have a white picket fence because it would be too hard to maintain. I do have a wooden fence around my backyard. It’s falling apart because the previous owners of my house buried the base of the fence in the dirt, causing it to rot. We have lived in the house for nearly a decade and despite concerted efforts, have not yet gotten around to fixing the fence. We’ve been too busy refinishing the deck (which now needs to be done again), removing trees that were about to fall through the roof (which, by the way, desperately needs to be redone), painting the interior, attempting to refinish stairs and tending to the never-ending list of things that need replacing and fixing. Owning a house requires time and money – preferably vast quantities of both – and I never have enough of either.
Which leads me to financial stability – weren’t we all led to believe that if we applied ourselves and made smart financial decisions, we would live comfortable lives in relatively nice houses, with solid savings accounts, annual vacations, and at least a “toy” or two of our choosing? While I’ll admit to dreaming of luxury, I never expected it. I certainly wasn’t raised in a life of luxury – my family was solidly middle class and very frugal. We took driving vacations, always staying at the Travel Lodge or Motel 6. Our house was neat and tidy, but small and perpetually in some incomplete state. I finally got a pair of $50 Guess jeans in high school, after extensive begging and pleading. Come to think of it, premium denim is a perfect example of how much harder things have gotten financially. Today, a good pair of jeans – 7 for All Mankind, Citizens of Humanity, J Brand, Paige – will easily run you $200. That’s an increase of 300% for a nice pair of jeans over 20 years! If salaries had increased at the same rate, a person who was making $40,000 a year in 1988 would be pulling down $160,000 today. Now I realize premium denim is certainly not a necessity in life, but you’d think you could reward your hard work with a nice pair of jeans now and then without breaking the bank, and the more important point is a lot of other things have followed suit, causing many double-income, hard-working families to feel like they are perpetually falling short.
Of all life’s difficult adventures, parenting definitely tops the list as the most challenging. I sort of knew it would be physically exhausting – even though you can never really know what the extreme sleep deprivation of having a newborn is like until you go through it, particularly when that sleep deprivation continues well beyond the “newborn” months. I also expected that parenting would try what little patience I have on a regular basis, and it does. What I was completely unprepared for is how emotionally overwhelming it is to be a parent. I had no idea how hard it would be to love something so much and be completely responsible for its well-being. To be overcome with love, terror, joy, devotion and panic all at the same time has a way of rending your heart like nothing else. I recall one particularly hard day during my maternity leave when my son hadn’t slept for more than a half-hour stretch in days and cried inconsolably for hours upon hours. At my wit’s end, I called my friend Amy, who, having a daughter exactly a year older than my son, was an absolute parenting guru in my mind. Tears streamed down my exhausted and frustrated face as I said, “I just don’t think I can DO this!” The wise-beyond-her-single-year-of-parenting-Amy said, “I know how you feel, but guess what I realized when I felt that way?” There was a long silence during which I desperately hoped she would give me the secret to making it less hard. Instead, this is what she said: “I realized it didn’t really matter if I thought I could do it or not. I WOULD do it because I HAD to do it. I mean, what choice do you have?” So, the profound realization was, yeah, it’s harder than you ever imagined and you’re going to rise to the challenge because there simply isn’t an easy option.
My work life is also harder than I thought it would be. I’ve always been very career-oriented and I wouldn’t change that for the world even if I could. But being ambitious and caring about doing good work can be a real grind, especially for a gal who got so hooked on those gold stars early on. So often, skepticism and criticism come much more regularly and swiftly than recognition and praise. As a very wise man (wise despite his inability to put shoes away) gently reminds me, “The world is not going to stand up and clap.” Well, why not?!? Who couldn’t use some enthusiastic and regular applause? I certainly could. I would very much like the world to stand up and clap for me. I once saw a video on YouTube of a flash mob that was set up to promote recycling. It took place in the very busy food court of a crowded mall. An empty plastic bottle was placed on the ground, right next to a recycling bin. The video captured person after person walking by, noticing the bottle and doing nothing. Finally, a woman picked the bottle up and threw it in the container. The entire place was in on the plan and hundreds of people exploded in a standing ovation for her that went on and on and on. If only getting the world to stand up and clap for a job well done was as easy as putting a plastic bottle in the appropriate recycling receptacle.
Generally, I’m a big believer in the “nothing (or very little) good comes easy” philosophy. I don’t mind working hard and I believe that you typically get out of something what you put into it. I know I’m going to have to keep working like crazy, and even still, the world isn’t going to stand up and clap. But, you can be sure that while I’m slaving away, I’ll be looking for more of those oh-so-good and oh-so-easy perfect suede jacket moments. There have GOT to be more of them out there . . . don’t there? Come on, lie to me.
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