Making it look easy is the true strength — what can we learn from it?
Recently, I noticed something peculiar in my daughters’ room (5yo and 7 yo). Their door handle, closet handle and toilet flush handle were all wriggly. I found it odd because they are young and barley have a strength that could make those handles go wriggly. So I asked my daughters to show me how they are pushing down on the handles and what they did surprise me. They were, especially the 5 yo, using their entire body weight to press down on those handles! Not only that, they weren’t pressing down on it from the form of the handle but from an angle, exerting a sideways force at the same time they were trying to exert a downward force. No wonder!
I found it fascinating and (for whatever reason) chewed on this thought and realised that the reason adults can exert the right amount of power when pressing down on a handle is that our muscles are strong enough to control the strength of the muscle itself, not because our muscles are weak. Interestingly, from my kids’ perspective, adults pressing down on a handle must have looked extremely easy. They must have been “Oh that looks easy, I am sure I can do it too!” when in reality, it is more like “Oh it's harder than it looks. let me just push down with my whole body weight!”.
Although it sounds like a trivial event which I am sure almost all parents experience, there is a lot of lessons we can learn from this. For instance, my daughters didn’t see me when I was their age during which I was probably struggling and breaking handles just as they are. They also didn’t get to watch me grow and how a gradual increase in my muscle mass allowed me to use handles without breaking it. What they saw was the final product (a fully grown adult) and that is why it gave them a false impression that they could also do it without much effort or breaking things. Anyone who watches sports will agree with me. It looks so easy when Tiger Woods gets a birdie in every hole but we could never replicate it. It looks so easy when Lebron James dribbles but we could never dribble like him. This underestimation happens in other areas of life too. It looks so easy when you see Brian Chesky making all the headline news. Many people are like “oh that guy is lucky! Take the BnB concept online, make an app then boom!” but what they didn’t see is when Brian was struggling, surviving and persevering. They don’t realise that what they see is a final product (and still evolving) after years of hard work, iteration and struggle.
What I find unfortunate is that many of us are asking those who made it to the top to share what they earned as if they are entitled to it. In reality, they are watching Netflix, hoping the same ‘luck’ could find them one day. Such miracle rarely happens and even if such rare events happen to you, you are likely to blow it off (i.e. lottery wins). And please don’t feel that those who made to the top owes the rest anything. The fact that they took a risk, invested their time/money, pushed through struggles to get to the top and finally pulling it off and pushing the bar higher by setting an example IS the best gift they can share with the rest of us. It's not ‘them’ who need to pull us up but ‘us’ who need to grow through our own course of taking a risk, hard work, and persevering.
I tried teaching my daughters how to press a handle without making it wriggle but they can’t do it. It's not because I am a mean father but because they are not strong enough yet. They will have to grow and learn it themselves. Same can be said to Tiger Woods or Brian Chesky. By pushing the bar higher, their part is done and whatever extra they are sharing is out of goodwill. It is up to the rest of us to learn from it, charter our own journey and push the bar higher our own way.
