I have heard this phrase over the years and hadn’t heard it again for a while until a few weeks ago when I saw it, and it’s been on my mind as I observe the world around us, our country, and my own existence.  

The simple fact is that a lot of times in life we don’t always get to ‘choose our hard’.  A lot of times it’s chosen for us, and we have to do the best we can with what we have, and most of us do.  

But in a lot of ways in life we DO get to ‘choose our hard’, both personally and as a nation.  

For me, I came to the realization a few years ago in my early 40’s that I’m probably going to be sore every day for the rest of my life, so do I want that soreness to be from being out of shape and sedentary, or do I want that soreness to be from exercising?  

It’s a daily mental struggle but I’ve chosen the hard of exercising every day, and today as I type this I’m on day 1,306 straight of exercising at least 30 minutes every single day, starting at the end of March 2020 during the pandemic.  That’s the hard I’ve chosen.  

Another hard I’ve chosen is to be registered to vote as no party affiliation and to go through life as a centrist independent the last 20 years and counting.  

Our country has to face a lot of hard choices as well, and as I’ve said before, inaction is a choice as well.  The one most prominently on my mind at the moment is the choice of how to deal with mass shootings and gun violence.

Yes it’s hard to choose to deal with gun control issues.  Yes it’s hard to deal with electing politicians who will actually work together on this and other issues.  

You know what is also hard?  Having to continue to live with the daily fear of knowing it could be the last time you see your kid alive when you drop them off at school, or the mall, or the bowling alley or at a restaurant.  Yet that seems to be the hard my fellow Americans have chosen.  

Is it hard to be engaged as a citizen, to be current on the issues, to keep an open mind, to be involved in political causes and campaigns, especially when you’re working full time, have kids and other obligations taking up all of your free time it seems like?  Yep.  And for many citizens, just taking the time to vote every year is all they can muster and that’s fine if that’s truly the best they can do.  

But you know what’s also hard?  Choosing to check out, not care, be self-absorbed, and see your country’s democracy and rule of law develop cracks and falter over time due to apathy on the part of the masses, and maybe one day waking up when its too late to realize that America has become as FDR said about people in faraway lands that had “yielded their democracy”.  

The focus the last 3 weeks has been on the House of Representatives and the vacant Speaker of the House position which just finally got filled.  

For 3 weeks we did not have a functioning branch of government because of a small minority of extremists.  

For 3 weeks the focus was on the GOP for not being able to unify behind a single person for the job.  The Democrats kept quiet, playing the seemingly smart play from a partisanship standpoint of allowing the GOP as much rope as they could handle to hang themselves.  But was it smart?  Was it truly what was best for the country as a whole?  

When you come from a mindset like me of putting Country Over Party, what was best for the country during those 3 weeks?  Which ‘hard’ should the Democrats have chosen?

The Democrats had several options.  First, they could have voted for McCarthy to keep the job and thereby made him beholden to them to keep the job and hopefully bring him back more towards the center and get more bipartisan bills passed and simultaneously make the right wing nutjobs like Gaetz irrelevant.    

Second, they could have said they would support a different more centrist or moderate Republican that would do the same thing that they trusted more than McCarthy to work in a bipartisan fashion with both parties to advance legislation.

Now, instead, the GOP took 3 weeks to pick a new Speaker entirely on their own who is arguably more right wing than McCarthy was, less experienced of a legislator and politician, and more beholden to the right wing.  How long will Johnson’s Speakership last?  

The right wing chose their hard of vacating the Speaker’s chair and then had to deal with the consequences.  The Dems chose their hard of not lifting a finger to try and come to a bipartisan solution, in the hopes that they can run on the issue next year and win back the House.  

It was a cold blooded, politically calculating, and quite frankly craven choice….why pass legislation today that can help the American people when they can ‘possibly’ get control in 14+ months and ‘possibly’ pass legislation then….the mindset being ‘the American people can wait while they play partisan games’.  

You know who can’t wait?  The Ukrainians and Israelis who are in need of our financial and military assistance as they fight the forces of evil and terror in the form of Russia and Hamas.  

My fellow Americans, there are going to be a lot more hard choices ahead for all of us, both personally and as a nation.  I truly hope we all ‘choose our hard’ wisely.