The Hard Thing About Hard Things Novels & Stories

I am that forward. “Hey, Mr. C… I mean Hardin. Yes, Hardin. Look, everyone has their weakest moments in life, and everyone is allowed to feel things and be weak. You having a breakdown doesn’t make you any less of you. You are still who you are even when you are crying. When you are grunting and scowling at me, when you are laughing with Mr. Scott. You are still you. And yes, it sucks to be seen that way. But you are human. And humans are weaklings. So please don’t beat yourself for something like that. You are not Iron-Man okay?” He stared at my hand as if it was some sort of an ugly thing, and then his lips tugged up in a small smile and he glanced out at the night sky.

He worried about the future of his career and about whether or not people would find out about the severity of his injury. “I've got to stay tough,” he said out loud. “I've got to grind hard and get through this.” It's not like physical therapy is going to be the worst thing I've ever gone through anyway, he thought. If the rest of it is anything like today, then it'll be a piece of cake. Some massages and a few simple exercises. No problem.

That was one sight to behold! “Man, did you hear a word I said to you?” Mark’s voice jolted me back to the moment. “Yeah, yeah, I got you, man. It's just not as easy as you think, bro. it’s complicated, and I don’t want to mess it up.” Mark glanced at me, still looking over his shoulder before responding: “Listen, nothing is easy. As a Forbes list billionaire, I think you already knew that. So stop waiting for things to be easy, and tackle the difficult ones as they are. It will never get easy, bro!”

“Who would want to keep looking their biggest mistake in the face?” “So that’s what you do? Avoid the hard things in life?” His accent caressed the word hard, and I knew very well he meant himself in more ways than one. “Hard things only get me into trouble,” I said. “Why go after things that make your life more complicated?” “Because sometimes the hardest things can bring the most pleasure.”

An extra hour every day would make all the difference. I always pretended to Jace that everything was fine because I didn’t want him to know how hard I struggled to make ends meet. Jace would help me, I knew he would, but I couldn’t lay this burden at his door. Secretly, I was glad that Josh had let me down for this weekend so that I hadn’t had to go out with Jace and his friends last night – I was drowning in debt and my credit card would bottom out soon. Sometimes I felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. It seemed like no matter how hard I worked, how much I strived to be a great mom, there was always something in the way making it feel like an uphill battle with me pulling

He lets it be what it is. The room is dim. The air feels cooler. My body feels wrung out, like I’ve been holding myself upright against a current I didn’t realize was there. “I hate this part,” I murmur eventually, voice thick. “The softness. It hurts.” His arm tightens just enough to be felt, not restraining, not possessive. Anchoring. “Hardness costs more,” he says. The truth of it lands slowly, like it needs time to settle. The cost of staying rigid. The cost of carrying every failure like it’s a moral debt that can never be paid down. The cost of believing that if I feel less, fewer people will get hurt.

But because you asked me a question at the mill and I answered it and have been answering it ever since, and I think you deserve to know that the question was a good one and the answer has held. And because twenty-seven years is a long time to work on the harder thing and I want to know if it has become, over time, less hard. — Zara Ashcroft-Voss His reply came in three weeks. The harder thing has not become less hard. But it has become more familiar. There is a difference between difficulty and strangeness. The difficulty remains. The strangeness — the specific unsettling quality of revising a premise you held for thirty years — that has reduced. I am working on it still. I expect to be wor

About how the best things aren't the ones that come easily, but the ones you construct carefully, brick by brick, with intention and honesty. And for the first time, I believed we might actually build something worth keeping.

I am standing in a godforsaken waiting room. With each second that the clock ticks to a minute, there is a small piece of me that is slowly dying. The hardest thing in life is having patience. They say the longer something takes, the better the outcome. Well, I say it is bullshit. We have been waiting like what seems forever. Everyone is trying their level best to calm me down and assure me that everything is going to be okay. Well, I have had enough.

I could have both. “I think we should celebrate,” Jacob said as we walked out from the diner, hand in hand. “Ha, that’s funny. That’s what everyone’s been saying,” I said. “I guess I just feel like I don’t really have anything to celebrate quite yet. The hardest part is still ahead of me.” “You’ve gotta appreciate the little things though,” he said. “They’re what turns into the big things. You wouldn’t be in position to compete for your dream job if you hadn’t first been accepted.”