Do Hard Things ~ Their Story Meets My Story

Alex and Brett Harris, 24-year-old twins from Oregon who graduated from Patrick Henry College in 2012, are ordinary kids who have done some extraordinary things.  While still in their teen years, Alex and Brett started a new movement among teens: the Rebelution.  They combined the words 'rebellion' and 'revolution,' creating a brand new word to refer to an entirely new concept: rebelling against rebellion.  More specifically, Alex and Brett defined the Rebelution as 'a teenage rebellion against low expectations.'  They wrote a book, Do Hard Things, when they were nineteen, and it was through this book that these two not-so-ordinary average homeschooled guys changed my life. 

Let me back up a bit and tell you the story of these two normal, but extraordinary, young men.  In the summer of 2005, when Alex and Brett were sixteen, they decided to take a break after several years of high-school speech and debate.  That’s when their eyes were opened.  Instead of letting the boys laze away the summer, their dad put them on an intense reading program that involved thick books on a wide range of topics: history, philosophy, theology, sociology, science, business, journalism, and globalization.  The twins began to realize that, though the books they were reading were written for adults, teens were the ones who really needed to read them.  Teens were the philosophers, scientists, journalists, and businessmen of the next generation, and they needed to be aware of what was going on in the world that would be theirs in just a few short years.  Alex and Brett became convinced that there had to be more to the teen years than modern culture suggests. 

Looking for a way to share their ideas with other teens, they decided to start an online blog page called ‘the Rebelution.’  It was a simple, Google-hosted blog, but it soon became the most popular Christian teen blog on the web.  Alex and Brett posted a series of articles called The Myth of Adolescence, questioning the modern view of the teen years as a time to goof off.  From all over the world, teens started to comment on their posts, and the twins were surprised and elated to find that other teens also felt strongly that the teen years should have deeper meaning.  The online discussions heated up, and it became obvious that the movement would go much farther than a Google-hosted blog with a generic design template.  Three weeks after the blog was launched, the sixth-largest daily newspaper in the United States, the New York Daily News, wrote a feature article about the Rebelution, which drew more readers to the blog. 

In October of 2005, Alex and Brett Harris were invited to apply for a two-month internship at the Alabama Supreme Court.  They were astounded.  Sure, they’d been successful in speech and debate competition; but they were only sixteen years old, and still in high school!  The staff attorney in charge of Justice Tom Parker’s office had been reading the Rebelution blog and saw an opportunity to test out the idea that teens waste enormous potential.  Justice Parker decided to ignore the usual age requirement and look only at whether the boys could do the job. 

The brothers chose to apply for the internship and were accepted after an agonizing month of waiting.  They would start two months before they turned seventeen.  Though they were very excited, the boys also felt enormous pressure: God seemed to be making them guinea pigs for their own ideas, and it was up to them to prove that teens really could do hard, important things. 

Upon their arrival in Montgomery, Alabama, the twins learned that they would be expected to contribute in a variety of ways, and training would be entirely on-the-job.  It would be very hard work; Justice Parker had ignored the boys’ age when he accepted them for the job, and he would continue to ignore it.  Though Justice Parker and his staff were very kind and inclusive, Alex and Brett didn’t receive any special treatment because they were so young.

Each time the boys did well at something, Justice Parker trusted them with a bigger, more significant task, so that at the end of two months the boys had gone from running errands to accompanying Justice Parker to momentous events.  They had risen from editing cases for punctuation and spelling to actually contributing final paragraphs.  By the time their internship was over, they were thrilled at what they had been able to accomplish.  They returned home to Oregon eager to get back in touch with their friends on the Rebelution blog, and they found a host of teens eager to join them in doing hard things.

Another opportunity came right away.  The Harris boys were invited back to Alabama to serve as grass-roots directors for four simultaneous statewide campaigns for the Alabama Supreme Court, including Justice Parker’s run for chief justice.  The guinea pigs had survived!  Their internships had tested two young men, but the statewide campaigns would test hundreds of teenagers.  As grass-roots directors, the twins would be working with and recruiting teens to head up efforts around the state, following the same principles that had given them the job: they would judge by ability, not age, to decide who would be recruited.

Alex and Brett returned to Alabama in spring of 2006, ready to advance the Rebelution to a whole new level.  All of the campaign’s key members were young: their campaign manager, who was by far the oldest of the group, was in his thirties, and their field director was twenty-three.  Teens designed the campaign website, planned housing and meals for out-of-state volunteers, used advanced mapping software to create driving routes for literature drops, planned events, coordinated television updates, and provided graphic design, photography, and videography.  By the time it was all over, teens had worked hundreds of hours on the campaign and coordinated the largest grass-roots operations in the state that season.  They lost the election, but they won something much bigger than a campaign.  Alex and Brett, and hundreds of teenagers across America, had proven that kids are more than capable of successfully completing important tasks.

When the twins arrived home from Alabama, they decided it was time to take their little blog to the next level.  They started a project to create a full-blown website that would feature discussion forums, links to hundreds of other articles, and a conference section detailing their plan to host four regional events during 2007.  After weeks of planning and hard work by Alex, Brett, and two of their friends, the website launched on August 28, 2006, the one-year anniversary of the Rebelution blog.  The response to the web site was immediate and overwhelming: the web traffic on their site jumped from 2,200 hits the previous day to 12,800 on launch day—a 480 percent increase overnight!  It was no longer a generic, Google-hosted blog; it was a huge online community.

In 2007 and 2008, Alex and Brett took the Rebelution on the road, hosting Rebelution conferences across the United States, and internationally in Japan.  Then, two years after their dad dropped that huge stack of books on the kitchen table, they decided to write their own book.  Do Hard Things tells their story—the story of two ordinary teenagers who took on extraordinary challenges—as well as the stories of other teens who joined the Rebelution.  Not only that, but Alex and Brett tell us—the ordinary teens—how we can do hard things, too.

These normal but extraordinary young men touched my life through their book, Do Hard Things; the Harris boys’ story has inspired me to a degree that I never thought possible.  I read their book just over a year ago, and it has inspired amazing things in my life.  I'm seventeen, I've been home-schooled since kindergarten, and I've always been an ‘A+’ kind of girl, but this book made me realize something new.  Alex and Brett outline five kinds of hard things: First, things that take you outside of your comfort zone.  For me, this involves putting myself in situations where I'll have to try new things, meet new people, and risk looking like a dork.  Second, there are the things that go beyond what's expected or required, like pushing for an A+ even when everyone already thinks you're great for getting an A-.  Third, we can join together with other teens to do hard things that are too big to accomplish alone.  Then fourth, there are the small hard things that don't pay off immediately; and fifth, taking a stand, going against the norm. 

I've tried to do hard things in most of these areas.  Probably the biggest hard thing I've done so far is start speech and debate—that was definitely outside of my comfort zone.  Just over a year ago, my parents discovered speech and debate, and were inspired by what they thought it would do for my character and confidence.  To say that I had an aversion to public speaking is a major understatement—I was terrified.  When I showed up at club that first day, I didn’t know anyone, I knew nothing about debate, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Fortunately, thanks to the Harris’s encouragement to step out of my comfort zone, I had decided beforehand to abandon all my perfectionism and self-consciousness and just go for it.  In club that day, our coach had us play some wacky impromptu speech and acting games, during which I made a complete fool out of myself.  I stretched my comfort zone almost to the breaking point, and found myself smack in the middle of one the most fun things I’ve ever done, as well as part of a brand new circle of dear friends.  I competed in Team Policy debate, which improved my research skills, my public speaking ability, my confidence, and my relationship with my brother, who was my partner.  I also qualified to participate in the National tournament with my 10-minute prepared speech, which happened to be about Do Hard Things!!  Throughout the year, I began friendships with homeschooled teens all over the state of Colorado—and across the nation—and my faith was elevated to a new level through those relationships.  To think that I might not have gone to that first speech and debate club meeting, had I not been so influenced by Alex and Brett’s book, is horrifying.  I’m motivated all over again when I consider it!

I was also re-inspired to play the piano like never before.  I’ve played for over eleven years and have reached a certain level of proficiency, but during the beginning of my junior year I became bored with it and my progress plateaued.  I was over at a friend’s house in the spring—a friend who holds my respect and had already inspired me to do better in a lot of areas, including debate—and heard him play the piano.  He had played for only five years, but he made what I previously called ‘playing’ seem like chopsticks.  He helped me realize that doing hard things applies to piano, too!  I knew I could do better, and threw myself back into practicing with a passion and a fury.  I recently mastered the theme from The Pirates of the Caribbean, arranged by Jarrod Radnich; I knew starting out that it would be very difficult and would probably take several months to complete, but with determination, practice, and patience I finished it!  I am continuing to push myself to play more and more advanced and exciting pieces.

It might surprise you to learn that the thing I've found the hardest is the little things, the daily routines that really are the framework for life.  It's doing the laundry, exercising regularly, keeping my room clean, being patient with my little brothers and sisters, responding to my parents with respect... the things that need done again and again.  I sometimes wonder if it's actually going to make a difference in the long run.  Is it really going to matter in five years if I make my bed today?  It will.  The Harris boys’ book made clear to me that these are the things that build habits, preparing us for bigger challenges in the future.  We're always going to have these menial tasks that don't seem to matter, but these are the things that God uses to shape us into the men and women He wants us to be.

I've also had some opportunities to take a stand.  During my sophomore and junior years, I was in various situations where I was surrounded by provocatively dressed girls, perverted guys, nasty language, and bad attitudes.  I took a stand by dressing modestly, keeping a clean mouth, and doing my homework.  I was also on the lookout for opportunities to share my faith in the midst of the secularism.  I was often confronted by peers who shunned me for my faith.  But I found that I could be thankful for those situations, because in them I saw possibilities, chances to let them see the love of Jesus through me.

Now, as I am beginning my senior year of high school and preparing to take my next step towards adulthood, I am continuing to do hard things.  In September, with the aid of a preparation curriculum that my mom purchased for me, and the diligence and persistence only God can give, I raised my ACT score five points from my initial test.  I recently discovered the American Legion Oratorical Contest, a “high school Constitution speech contest,” in which real money is the prize for winning.  My desire to attend an excellent - and expensive - private Christian university, combined with my passion for and faith in the Biblical roots of America and the uniqueness of our Constitution, is inspiring me to work hard, writing and memorizing the required speeches; competition begins in December.  I have decided to compete in Lincoln-Douglas debate instead of Team Policy, which will force me to become even more confident and self-sufficient in the area of preparation, since I won’t be able to depend on a partner.  It will also expand my horizons from concrete, straightforward policy to discussing complex, multi-faceted ideas such as philosophy, values, and the history of morality.  I have begun competing in Extemporaneous Speaking, an event in which the student is given 30 minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech that addresses some aspect of current events.  This has forced me to pay attention to what is happening in the world around me and caused me to realize just how good my life really is.  As I consider how my outlook on life has expanded and my opportunities have increased over the past eighteen months since I read Do Hard Things, I thank God for the Harris twins, and that I found their book when I did!

Though I’ve never even met them, Alex and Brett have started a whole new life for me.  Reading their book was like being born again a second time: Before, I was just an average homeschooled kid with a little circle of friends, moderate ability to play the piano, a faith that was mine (not for sharing!), and a well-defined comfort zone.  Since I read their book, I've become an average homeschooled kid who’s trying to be extraordinary.  I have an extended circle of dear friends, the desire and motivation to play the piano like a master, a stronger faith that I’m eager to share, and a comfort zone that—though already significantly larger—gets stretched farther every day.  I give credit to Alex and Brett for exciting and motivating me, and glory to God for inspiring the Harris twins and creating me with the traits and talents necessary to make the Rebelution manifest.