Why Would Anyone Ever Choose the Hard Way?
At our beloved fall festival, there comes a time during the spectacular hayride when the driver yells, “Do you want to go the easy way, or do you want to go the hard way?”
Ahead is a fork in the road, and a sign designating two paths. One is supposedly “easy” and the other, in a darkened part of the forest, is supposedly “hard.”
No matter what answer the hay-riders give, the driver always goes the “hard” way. It’s a Halloween-themed hayride, and the “hard” way is supposed to be scarier.
One day, when the boys were discussing that very ride, Shane said, “Really, why would anyone ever choose the hard way?”
“Maybe they like a good challenge,” I suggested. “Isn’t it a good thing to challenge yourself?”
“NO,” Dylan chimed in. “Why would you challenge yourself if you didn’t have to?”
Shane said, “Yeah, like if somebody is offering you $100 to do nothing, or if he’s offering you $100 to do work for an hour, everybody would take the $100 to do nothing!”
“But then the work would still need to be done,” I said.
Dylan said, “You would have $100 so you could pay somebody to do the work!”
“But then you don’t have $100 anymore,” I said. “And you don’t have the feeling of self-satisfaction that you get when you do the work yourself. Don’t you enjoy the feeling you get when you do the work yourself?”
There was no sound from the backseat, except distant crickets.
Finally someone spoke: “No, it’s just hard.”
About an hour later, I was driving Dylan to work. He’s had a part-time job for two summers now, as an usher at a local concert venue.
Unsolicited he said, “I don’t want to go to work. But I need money, so I am going to work. So I guess I do want to go.”
“Welcome to the American dream,” I said.
I didn’t mention the hard way.