An offer we can’t resist

The year my younger brother died was one of nonstop disaster, a never-ending series of events that, in my lighter moments, I called The Tragedy Train. The cars just kept rolling, and when the last one finally cleared the crossing, my nervous system crashed in a weird, stubborn cascade of symptoms that’s taken years to work through.

So life has been hard, harder than I ever thought it could be. And it’s quite sobering to be inside something as challenging as these years have been. Rather than wishing I could help others, I wished I could help myself. And there’s been very little to do, except wait. Step after step after step, each one a bit harder over time, as weariness set in. And how badly I wanted a step forward that didn’t take every ounce of energy I had. A step that might return something back to me instead of drafting from an already overdrawn account.

My wish, my heartbroken pleading, was: please — just let one thing be easy.

The tragedy train had just begun rolling — the way you’re sitting at the tracks and can’t see how far back the line goes before realizing you’ve been taken hostage by an endless carriage of steel. I was driving back from my parents’ house after my brother’s passing when I felt the first tug of it. ”Please, can’t it just be easy?” A shaky prayer, a barely perceptible whisper, followed by the smallest dust-speckled beam of clarity in the dawning of the sun over my shoulder as I returned west.

A slightly louder answer came back. It said that Easy is the devil we seek. The one we strike bargains with, fall into desire alongside, succumb to. The refrain is tuned differently for each person, each moment, each yearning, yet the siren song remains the same: It’ll be easy.

• If I were rich, money would be easy.
• If I were famous, relationships would be easy.
• If I were beautiful, love would be easy.
• If I were smart, work would be easy.

Ironically, being at the upper end of any scale only adds layers of complexity. And the further up the scale you find yourself, the more layers there are to navigate.

If we look at some of our solutions to life, it can feel like we’ve been opting into a complexity we never really needed, all in the name of easy.

• Tinder: Sex should be easy.
• Ozempic: Losing weight should be easy.
• Robinhood: Investing should be easy.
• Wordpress: Websites should be easy.
• ChatGPT: Research should be easy.

Simplicity is a wonderful thing, though I would argue it’s not at all related to how easy something might be. We need only look to minds like Dieter Rams and his oft-quoted advice to be reminded that simplicity is, in fact, a very difficult outcome to achieve. Products and services should absolutely help uncomplicate our lives.

However, I would be hard-pressed to find an example of a pursuit made dramatically easier where it wasn’t also accompanied by a proportionate, tangible loss of reward or ownership.

Can anyone say that forming relationships is easier in 2025?

Do we see famous people living their best lives, or is the sheen wearing thin?

Are the best investors inside their apps or inside trading?

Increasingly, ease itself is becoming untrustworthy, a promise that hasn’t held up its end of the bargain. We sign up for bootcamps, courses, immersion experiences, retreats, gurus, products, consultations — hasty suggestions of reward with diminishing returns.

In my own work, I am often hesitant to make brave claims. Do I offer transformation? Change the world with the power of design? Yes, and no — in the way a buttefly sneezes and an angel gets its wings. Small acts can have lasting impact.

But there’s not a single partnership or collaboration driven by only one side of the table. So, for me, what I actually offer is process and guidance — a journey. Where it ends is too dependent on external factors, on real-world circumstance, to arrive at predetermined, idealized outcomes. And sometimes, yes, the journey is grueling. Look at the dance algorithms have us beating our feet to just to try to stay revelant.

Me? I’ve seen it too close, too personal. It’s a paradox that is invisible when you’re caught in it. Easy is hard. Easy is costly. Easy will eat your lunch and raid your snack drawer.

Being knowable, being trusted — which is the work we’re all doing in business and life — is in the steps. In walking alongside those who might need a hand back from someone just a little further ahead. It’s in figuring out how to show up, day after day, even when we’re not sure how, or where, it ends.

It’s a simple job.

But it’s not easy.

Take it with you

I printed a few The Devil Is Easy stickers, a small reminder that the hard way’s often the real way. Tap the button if you’d like one and I’ll send it your way.