How to Suck It Up: A Comprehensive Guide for Today’s Youth

We all have our special skills; our gifts, if you will.  I, for instance, am remarkably good at sucking it up.  It has recently come to my attention that my kids some people think that sucking it up is a skill that they cannot learn, that only superwomen like me have it.  They think that people like me are just hardcore, badass, incredibly tough people.  They could not be more wrong!  At heart, I am a big old whiny baby.  I have aches and pains and I just want to lie in bed sometimes.  Yet, I routinely fall down, then pick myself up and go to work.  I have miserable back pain more often than not, and most people don’t know about it.  I once broke my thumb on my way to work, then got an ice pack at the office and avoided writing that day.  (Mostly because I was not capable of holding a pen, but I am perfectly capable of typing left-handed.)  I’m not tooting my own badass horn, here, I’m just demonstrating that if I can do it, then anyone else can, too.  I am not that tough, really.  Ask my husband, who is contractually obligated to listen to me whine for as long as he lives.  Lucky fella.  Anyway, I just know that I have to suck it up and carry on because the world doesn’t stop turning for my little problems. (Or my big ones either, for that matter.)  And so, as I look all around me at the young people living spoiled and coddled little lives, it occurs to me that the time has come for a hard lesson.  And so I present my guidelines for learning to be a Suck-It-Up Master.  You’ll thank me when you have bills to pay and a hardnose boss who needs you at work even if you do have the flu, a migraine, or the black plague.

via diylol.com

• Listen to your mother.  (Or your father, your guardian, your grandparents and your aunts and uncles.  Whatever loving adult you have in your life.)  Your mother might not know everything (hahahahahaha…I got jokes.  Of course your mother knows everything), but one thing’s for sure, she knows more about life than you do.  You were given a mother to help you.  When you were little, that mostly entailed providing your nourishment and changing your poopy pants.  As you’ve grown, she’s there to help you learn to navigate the world.  If you mother tells you to grin and bear it, then do it.  Of anyone in the world, she is the last one who wants you to be hurt or miserable, so if she tells you to suck it up, then that truly means that it’s time to stop being a weenie.
• Be proactive.  Or reactive.  Just some kind of active.  Are you doing your part to improve your situation or are you just whining about it?  I admit, it is sometimes hard to resist a good whine.  I will sometimes complain about a headache and Hubs will ask me if I’ve taken any meds.  No, I have not.  Point taken, my dear.  If you haven’t done anything for yourself, then why in the world do you think anyone else will do anything for you?
• No one cares.  Okay, it’s harsh, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  Out in the big, bad world, no one cares about your problems.  No one’s going to come clean your toilet for you if you’re feeling bad.  Your co-workers will learn to hate you in short order if you miss work every time you get a twinge.  You learn to suck it up because you have to, because in real life, no one is going to look out for you.  There are things that need to be done and you will have to do them, no matter how you feel or what’s happening in your personal life.  This is how you earn respect, a sense of accomplishment and a steady job.
• Life isn’t fair.  Oh, you’ve heard this one before?  Then it must be true.  Life doesn’t even pretend to be fair.  The earlier you to learn to deal with it, the easier things will be for you.  You are going to have really awful days and you’ll get through them, because you have to.  You don’t always have to be Smiley Sally, but you’d darn well better learn about Brave-face Brenda, because you’re going to need her a lot in life.
• Some things can’t be fixed.  There are a lot of ailments in life that can’t be fixed.  I’ll bet, if you do a quick Google search, you’ll even find some worse than yours.  What do you do if you can’t fix it?  That’s right, you learn to live with it.  I cannot fix your headache.  I cannot fix my aching back.  Shall we sit around and cry about it while cancer patients the world over pick themselves up and bravely face another day?  A little perspective, y’all.  Works wonders.

I have, on rare occasion, been accused of being a hard woman.  (Shocking, I know.)  I just don’t know how else to be when we’re living in a hard world.  Would I like to hold and coddle my children when they’re not feeling well?  Sure, I would.  I’m not heartless. (I am not!)  I just don’t think I’m doing them any favors by treating them like that.  They are plenty old enough to learn how to conduct themselves in the real world.  It hurts me to see kids and young adults who never learned these lessons and it terrifies me that this is the generation who will be running the world when I am old and feeble.  There’s a lot going wrong with American society and these lessons won’t fix it all, but it surely can’t hurt.  We all admire the person who’s muscling through hardship and making things happen.  You know what separates you from that person?  Nothing.  They just know how to suck it up.