Do Hard Things

I carried a couch. And I mean that quite literally. The couch is not a metaphor. Not a joke. You can see it in the picture. I am not bragging–ok, well, maybe a little. But in reality, I did it for Chris. I did it in memory of my brother. Interestingly, I’m not even the first to do it. It’s starting to become a tradition around remembering Chris–couches.

In 2024, a whole bunch of people carried a couch for chris. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t in very good shape. I didn’t want to go because I had work to do. And it would have been a burden on my family. Little did I know that my wife would get extremely ill that weekend and have to be rushed to the ER to save our baby. It worked out, but I missed out on something very important–something that would have meant a lot for the process of mourning Chris.

So, I decided to do it again. In our first event, something like 30 people helped carry the couch. This time, I did not have that kind of support. I cracked out the power tools in my garage, got some tips from some local friends, and just busted it out. I hacked away at an old Click Clack couch that we bought when we first got married. I got a sled harness and hooked it to tie down straps with carabiners. I weighed it and reattached pieces to make it fit around me like a costume. And then, I carried it. 5 kilometers, up and down hills, across a finish line.

A few people came out to support. Melissa, Jon, and Graham cheered me on. Melissa walked with me, and Jon wore his fireman gear and ran ahead of us. And like I said, some local friends of mine helped me figure out how to mod the couch. But, ultimately, it was just me. 6 months of training. Hours spent out in the garage with power tools. I even did a full 5 kilometer practice run in my neighborhood.

The point I’m trying to make is not that I’m awesome. It’s that we should all be doing hard things purely for the sake of it. Hard things don’t have to be physical either. Try spending a day without your phone. Try making a fancy dinner for your family, not like the one you do every week. Try saving up for a really expensive gift for someone else. Hard things make us stronger. Hard things make us better. Hard things are what make us unique.

But more than that, doing hard things lets us prove to ourselves that we are capable of doing hard things. It’s easy to forget. Easy to get lazy. Easy to think that the world is too big, and the problems we have can’t be overcome. Do hard things. Because the world is hard. And you need to be just as hard to stand against it.