Friday, 23 October 2009

• Book Review - Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations

  I feel a slight shift inside of me.  Something has moved that I never intended to move, and I'm not complaining. 
  
  Somewhere within these pages, my apathy started to warm up and is leaving a puddle around my soul. 
  It started in chapter 1 of the book Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations, by Alex and Brett Harris, with challenging my thoughts by asking these questions:

  • "Is it possible that even though teens today have more freedom than any other generation in history, we're actually missing out on some of the best years of our lives?
  • Is it possible that what our culture says about the purpose and potential of the teen years is a lie and that we are its victims?<li>Is it possible that our teen years give us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for huge accomplishments?
  • And finally, what would our lives look like if we set out on a different path entirely - a path that required more effort but promised a lot more reward?"

  At this point, I wanted nothing to do with doing difficult things.  What a joke, I thought.  Why did I even get this book?  It's full of radical bull crap.
  
  Chapter 3 touched something I have been struggling with.  It talked about the word teenager, which was first used in a Reader's Digest issue in 1941.  Before that, you were either a child or an adult.  The modern idea of adolescence encourages us to stay as childish as possible for as long as we can, keeping us from our full potential.
  
  Many times in arguments with Mom, I pointed out that I was not a child - I always made a point of bringing up how, in other countries as well as in past times, "kids my age" were and are wives - even several times a mom - completely capable of adult responsibilities.  Always bringing up Mary, who was estimated to be about 13 when she gave birth to Christ - Christ!  Not just any child. 
  I felt validated. 
  
  The book is about how expectations for this age group have fallen in the last century so dramatically that we are expected to waste away our years as a teen by thinking we should be free of big responsibilities and just party it up with friends.  But I'm getting something else out of it, as expectations for me have always been set a little high.
  
  Chapter 8 covered the idea of doing "small hard things."  This chapter had a profound impact on that damn apathetic "ice" that was building up around me.  Of course, I've always known that we are to work as if we are working for the Lord.  But the way it was put actually made that relevant because prior to this, I've felt so incapable of doing anything.  Inadequate, incompetent.  But my perspective has been altered. 
  
  "See if you agree with our top five reasons [why small hard things are so difficult]:
  
  1. They don't usually go away after you do them.  'My bedroom doesn't stay clean.  The dishes don't stay washed.  Teeth don't stay brushed.  There's always another test for school and another temptation to say no to.  Over and over.  Does it ever stop?'
  2. They don't seem very important. 'Spending time with my little brother isn't as important as raising money for orphans in Africa or volunteering for a political campaign.  I'm supposed to do big things for God.  This is a distraction.'
  3. They don't seem to make any difference. 'In five years will it really matter whether I cleaned my room today?  Or whether I drove the speed limit to work?  Or whether I read my Bible this morning?  How do I benefit from these things?'
  4. They don't seem very glamorous. 'I don't get any props for holding my temper with my dad.  No one even knows.  And no I'm cleaning the bathroom.  It's a gross and thankless job.  Yuck.  This is not what I signed up for.'
  5. No one is watching. 'Everyone's impressed because she's running a charity for cancer patients.  No one knows or cares that I'm taking care of Grandma and studying for my SATs.'"
  
  At some time or another, I have been found under each category. 
  But here is where my mind flips out, where it won't let this thought go:
  
  "If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music.... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry.  Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.
  
  Like the street sweeper, your actions at home, at school, at church, and elsewhere in your community can bring honor and glory to God if you are willing to throw yourself into them 100 percent just because they're things He has given you to do."
  
  It's that last part - "...just because they're things He has given you to do" - that kills me.  It's that part that heats up my heart and makes me think that if the God of the universe has given me, little me, something to do, then I should do it as well as I can because I know He's got a reason much greater than the little ant of a person that I am. 
  
  I haven't finished the book, but I'm in chapter 10.  Whether or not my apathy will continue to melt remains to be seen and hopefully it won't freeze back up.  I will be 18 in a few months.  And if I look back at my life on the last of my teen years, knowing what they were and what they could have been if I had viewed myself as capable, if I look back and see a frozen 7 years... I just... I don't know.  I can't do that. 
  
  And here I am, standing in my puddle and soaking wet, before God and my college years.
  

  What are some difficult things you've had to do in your life?  Did you ask yourself the same questions the authors asked themselves?  How did you manage?
  

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