I Would Agree With You, But Then We’d Both Be Wrong: Thought of the Day and Question of the Day

February 02, 2026

Somewhere along the way, the easy things stop being easy.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just quietly.

You wake up one morning and realize that something which once required no effort now takes patience. Or planning. Or a pause before you even begin.

That realization often comes with humor first. A shrug. A joke. A sarcastic comment tossed into conversation like a life raft.

Because admitting something has become harder than it used to be can feel like admitting failure.

But most of the time, it isn’t failure at all.

It’s change.

And change rarely asks permission before it shows up.

Thought of the Day

I would agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong.

At first glance, it’s just a clever line. The kind of thing you say when a conversation has stalled or when certainty has turned into stubbornness.

But underneath the humor is something more honest.

Agreement isn’t the same thing as understanding. And being confident doesn’t always mean being correct.

When things are easy, certainty feels earned. We know what works because it worked yesterday. We know what’s right because nothing has tested it yet.

Difficulty has a way of stripping that confidence down to its studs.

The moment something stops working the way it used to, we’re forced to revisit our assumptions. About ourselves. About other people. About how much control we actually had in the first place.

I’ve written about that tension before in Never Let Struggle Steal the Sky. The struggle isn’t just an obstacle. It changes the view. It reframes what we notice and what we stop taking for granted.

Sometimes the most truthful response isn’t agreement or disagreement.

It’s admitting we don’t fully know yet.

That kind of uncertainty doesn’t mean we’re losing our footing.

It often means we’re finally standing on something real.

Question of the Day

What is something that used to be easy but is now difficult?

This question landed in my lap recently in the form of a very small human.

My youngest daughter just turned two.

For her first eighteen months on earth, she was the easiest of my three kids. Easygoing. Adaptable. Content to roll with whatever the day brought.

Then, gradually and unmistakably, that changed.

Over the last six months, she’s developed strong opinions. About what she likes. What she doesn’t like. What she wants. What she absolutely will not accept.

She didn’t become difficult because something went wrong.

She became difficult because something went right.

She found her will.

That shift reminds me of something I explored in Thought of the Day and Question of the Day: Habits, Opportunities, and a Few Words About My Cousin Vinny. When ease disappears, it often isn’t a problem to fix. It’s a signal that something has grown more complex.

Relationships get harder when they get more honest. Work gets harder when responsibility deepens. Parenting gets harder when children become themselves instead of extensions of our routines.

Even our inner lives get harder once we stop skimming the surface.

So when you sit with this question, try not to rush past it or solve it too quickly.

What became difficult?

And what did that difficulty make room for that didn’t exist before?

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