Hard

May 21, 2025

Dear Everett,

When you read this, you will almost certainly remember taking piano lessons. What you may not remember is why you started taking them. Last summer we visited some friends, and their teenage daughter practiced her piano recital music for us. You walked over to me from across the room and crawled into my lap, all without taking your eyes off of your friend playing the piano. You looked transfixed. I asked if you wanted to play the piano like that. Without taking your eyes off of her, you nodded. A few weeks later, another family of friends came to visit; seeing our piano, their teenage son sat down to play. Same reaction: you walked over to me and crawled into my lap, and when I asked if you wanted to play the piano like that, you nodded without taking your eyes off of what you were witnessing.

It would be hard to overstate how mesmerized you seemed in those moments. The first occurrence felt like something I could chalk up to novelty; you had never seen anyone play the piano, after all. The second occurrence, playing out almost identically to the first, felt like a sign, either from you or the universe, and something to which I should respond. I reached out to parents of your peers to find out if anyone had piano teachers they recommended. Through that channel we found you a piano teacher, and you’ve been taking lessons for most of the past school year.

You’ve advanced quickly. I never played the piano, so don’t have much frame of reference. But the context clues seem pretty compelling. Your teacher, who though quite friendly does not appear the type to doll out praise frivolously, compliments your progress regularly. She overestimates how much you practice based on how quickly you’ve learned. Your Gran, who did play the piano, periodically seems pretty impressed with how fast you are learning. And your mom, slow to praise lest her kids get cocky, once stopped what she was doing in the kitchen to walk over and watch you play. The relative complexity of your play had caught her attention, and she wanted to see it. As she walked away she raised her eyebrows; she was surprised and, reluctant though she would be to say so, impressed.

Recently you’ve complained about going to piano lessons. I’ve found the complaints confusing and surprising: you clearly enjoy playing the piano (you generally practice without being reminded, and you invariably play songs you know whenever you see a piano, be it in public or at someone’s house). You only complain when I pick you up for lessons, which initially made me wonder if you felt like you were missing out on time with friends at after-school. Your lessons are in the late afternoon, which made me wonder if you were tired and hungry. When you complain, I typically remind you that we don’t make decisions to stop something on the way to that thing; if we want to stop taking lessons, we need to talk about it in advance.

Yesterday when I picked you up for piano lessons, per recent custom you started to complain. I reminded you that we don’t make decisions en route, and suggested that if you wanted to stop that we should talk it over with your mom after lessons that night. You asked me to remind you. I tried asking some clarifying questions. Was it your teacher? Was it the timing? I told you that I thought you liked playing the piano, and was reluctant to see you stop doing something you liked, but that we could look into adjusting it so that you would enjoy it more.

On the way home from the lesson you reminded me that we should talk to Mom about stopping lessons. I said okay. You then proceeded to complain that your teacher was giving you material that was too advanced, and that you wanted to play things that were more appropriate for your age. (I found this line of reasoning pretty entertaining, because I have no idea how you would know what is appropriate for a seven year old on piano). I asked, “Is it that you don’t like playing piano? Or that you don’t like your teacher? Or is it that her lessons are too hard?” You responded pretty quickly and instinctively, “Too hard”.

We proceeded to have a conversation about hard. I told you that one of my favorite quotes comes from a basketball team (the recent NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks), “everything you want in life is on the other side of hard”. We talked about how the biggest difference between those who succeed in life and those who come up short is that successful people are willing to do things that are hard. We talked about watching the NBA playoffs (something we do every couple of nights these days), and how all the teams and players left have to embrace the fact that what they are doing is hard; no one can become an NBA champion without going through hard. I proposed you embrace an identity as someone who embraces hard, because it will help you succeed in life. A little while later, while we were all sitting down to dinner, I said “Everett, is there something you wanted to talk to your mom about?” You said, “No”. I took this to mean you were prepared to embrace hard, at least for today.

This morning it hit me: I needed that talk just as much as you did. I was talking to me as much as I was talking to you. Don’t get me wrong: I have the ability to do uncomfortable things. When I look back on my life to date, and see where I am versus where I started…one cannot make that transition without the ability to navigate challenging circumstances. I have the ability to focus, I have some grit, and when I know what I want I’m pretty good at making that happen. But part of navigating this stage of life is recognizing the parts that have been neglected and overlooked, and adjusting. In yoga, my eternal metaphor, it’s quite clear which parts of my body have been overlooked and neglected. While parts of my body are strong, others are quite stiff and weak. Recently I’ve noticed small evidence of progress, particularly in the form of muscles engaging that frankly, haven’t been. It feels new and exciting, but also foreign, because I don’t have a frame of reference for what it feels like to engage these muscles. It’s uncomfortable, and a little demoralizing: the progress feels so small relative to the time I’ve invested in making the progress. Said differently, I’m struggling with hard.

I wonder sometimes whether I under-appreciate how much progress I’ve made, and whether having proper perspective would help me maintain motivation. You are my example here: clearly you have made rapid progress, and it seems rather clear to me that you struggle to recognize and appreciate how far you’ve come. This is part of the job of the coach, teacher, or parent: help kids see how far they’ve come, so they might appreciate their progress and maintain perspective. Otherwise the familiarity of the discomfort tricks us into believing nothing has changed, and that we’re stuck in the same struggle in perpetuity.

Admittedly, I worry that I’m deluding myself, and fear the progress is too slow, and that I’m ultimately wasting my time, money, and effort. In those moments, I try to remind myself of the objective signs of progress I’ve made, and the people who have given me positive feedback along the way. Those moments keep me motivated to keep going, but I’ll admit, right now is still hard.

So it is with my spiritual journey as well. I wrote you recently about my third psychedelic journey. One element of that experience that continues to resonate: the idea of letting the darkness out of us. Since that experience, I’ve generally maintained an unsettled feeling. I’ve not enjoyed that feeling, and frankly tried avoiding it. I eventually followed up with my guide, admitting that I’ve generally avoided revisiting the experience (part of the “reintegration” process that’s pretty critical to retaining benefits from the experience). Her intuition was that the thing I am looking for is sitting in front me, if only I can get still enough to find it. A week later a friend said to me, unprompted, “I feel like the thing you are looking for is looking for you”, suggesting I only needed get out of my own way. Again, I’m struggling with hard.

I sense a feeling of darkness sitting in (or perhaps more accurately, attempting to rise out of) me. At the same time, I see darkness rising in others all around me. I see your mom struggle in waves, battling with darkness in her. I see it in my church, as we oscillate between accepting the invitation to let go of one trauma and battling with the next (with the battle winning out more often than letting go these days). And of course, I see evidence of our collective struggle all around me in our news and current events. Based on my psychedelic experience, I sense a call to support others in letting the darkness out…and yet I’ll admit to being completely befuddled in terms of how to go about doing so.

Your mom has been helpful. The last couple weeks we have gone for walks together. On the first, when your mom asked how she could help and offered some ideas, I found myself suggesting that I felt drawn to tackle some things on my to do list that had been hovering over me. I asked for some support, in the form of some grace: these were projects that felt daunting, because they felt like things I was bad at. I committed to trying my best, but asked for some grace to do the jobs poorly. Your mom, helpfully, granted me that grace. I almost wanted her to decline my request: part of me wanted to remain feeling stuck, but now I felt compelled to tackle some long-neglected projects.

The next week was pretty productive, if uncomfortable. The projects in question had a couple common characteristics: they all required working with a vendor, and they were all projects where your mom was likely to care about the outcome at least as much as I would. I didn’t like the feeling that I couldn’t control the outcome (precisely because I was working through someone else), and I really, really didn’t like the idea that the outcome would provoke a big argument with your mom. Fortunately, I was able to solve all the problems I set out to solve last week, and with less time and money spent than I anticipated or feared. I strongly suspect the success had something to do with the approach (accepting the discomfort and uncertainty, and not being attached to outcomes), but of course I can’t prove that. I won’t say I enjoyed the week, but I’m glad I did it, and sense I grew from the experience (though to what end I don’t have any idea).

Last week we went for another walk, and your mom let me brain dump all the ideas rattling around in my head, in terms of what direction I want to take my life and vocation: all the ideas, all the places I felt stuck, all the places where I felt overwhelmed in perceived complexity. Through that process we were able to separate out a couple different threads I had jumbled together, and create an opportunity to pursue both independently. Separating the threads allowed me to simplify the potential solutions such that next steps became relatively clear, and I no longer felt overwhelmed by a perception of interconnected complexity. I’m still uncomfortable, but have a bit more sense of direction.

This week I’ve noticed my home to do list growing, at a faster rate than normal. I’ve struggled to decide what to do each day, such that I’ve often defaulted to “very little”. I’ve napped, which I frankly count as a positive (sleep is not what I do best, so I’ll take it where I can get it), but I’ve frittered away a fair amount of time. I’ve restarted my meditation practice after a few weeks off (part of my recent tendency toward avoidance), which is also a positive. And today I’m writing this note, which feels like a win (any day I write, especially to you and your brother, feels like a win).

I was tempted to say next “but I can tell I’m avoiding something”. But that’s not quite right: a more positive (and accurate) framing is that I’m working up to doing the next batch of uncomfortable things. Napping, meditating, and writing are activities that bring me energy; I’m investing in those activities in anticipating of leveraging that energy to tackle the uncomfortable things I want to do.

Another way to frame my recent experiences: I’ve been avoiding hard. But I recognized my avoidance, and started confronting it. I’ve not embraced hard as quickly, completely, or effectively as I might have liked. But I’m attempting to tackle hard in ways I’ve avoided for decades, so I deserve a little grace. I tackled some hard last week, and am working my way back to tackling some more hard this week. Like I suggested to you, I am hopeful that I am able to practice embracing hard, such that I get better at it and am able to sit with it more often. If nothing else, doing so would mean setting a good example for you, which seems like the most important things in the world I can do. Wish me luck, and let me know how it turns out.

I love you kiddo.

Love,

Dad