If things are hard for everybody, now’s our chance to do more

A gas station fill-up is $25 bucks more than it was just a few months ago. A stop at the grocery store has grown by $50.

Most of us keep working harder, but our paychecks just seem to feel smaller; and every minor accident — the TV the three-year-old pushed over and the toaster that randomly died — feels a little more major.

It’s money I should have been saving. It’s my goals getting a little further down the road. 

And while that’s true, what I try to keep in mind is that while things are hard right now — harder at least — they’re hard for everybody. 

Each fill-up hurts, but they hurt for everybody. Every one of us is trying out the store brands to see if we can eat generic ranch without getting too sad. 

So, instead of getting discouraged, I feel like we have a couple options — stealing souls or steeling souls — neither as sinister as they might sound. 

When retired Navy SEAL David Goggins was going through one of his three Hell Weeks to make the elite squad, being broken mentally, physically and emotionally, he realized something. He was suffering. He was shivering uncontrollably in the frigid water — jackhammering, they called it. His body was broken, literally.  He developed stress fractures in his legs that he wrapped with duct tape so he could keep going.

He was suffering, but everyone was suffering. Everyone on that beach. Everyone that had ever been on that beach. 

Part of the trials of Hell Week was, as a crew, having to carry your boat around, even after being pushed past exhaustion. 

Goggins came to understand something, though, and he explained it to his crew. Instead of sulking around, laboring under this boat, they pushed it up into the air. They were yelling, hollering.

“You can’t break Boat Crew 2.” 

Then they watched the life drain from the eyes of everyone around them. Even the instructors, who had gone through Hell Week themselves, and couldn’t believe what they were seeing. 

As that energy left their bodies, Goggins said he and Boat Crew 2 essentially harvested it, fed off it. It was a shot in the arm.

He calls it taking souls.

I think one take-away now, in 2022, as inflation and gas prices grow, is that we’re all facing the same things.

We all suffered through the loss, the sickness and isolation of the worst parts of the pandemic; and we’re all facing thinning bank accounts as gas prices, grocery bills and everything else tick higher.

It’s enough to hold you down, to make you give up, or at least not attempt the things you’re destined to do. Maybe you don’t start that business you’ve been dreaming about, or you’re so down you don’t sign up for your first 5K. Maybe you stop creating and stop dreaming.

But why? We’re all starting from the same starting line. Gravity is still a constant; it’s not more powerful for you or me. We’re all facing the same weather, the same elevation. We’re all running up the same hill. 

We’re all having to work harder just to maintain. But if that’s enough to keep other people from starting, or to slow them down, that can be our advantage. If everyone else is moping in the humidity, you can sprint ahead. This can be your race. This can be your biggest win.

It can be an opportunity.

But there are others. 

If that’s stealing souls, we could also steel souls. 

If everyone is struggling, now is an incredible opportunity to help. The need is everywhere. For food. For love. For support.

With grocery budgets stretching less and less far, a donation to your local food bank is so valuable right now. Or donate by working a community dinner, or a soup kitchen, if that’s what’s in your neighborhood.

Or offer a good word. A compliment. 

Nice run. Awesome spreadsheet. Perfect hug.

It’ll go a long way. 

Inflation actually works backward in this instance.

Good deeds will go farther than they ever have before.