What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
When redditor datakeep asked that question earlier today, the more than 4,000 resuting replies could have easily been a chore to read.
But Reddit users’ practice of diligent voting quickly dug up quality posts and put them on a pedestal. The resulting top posts read more like a series of vignettes than haphazardly written forum posts.
Some interpreted the question as one of perseverance — from what challenge did I emerge successful? — but most saw it as one of the endurance of tragedy — what have I suffered?
On his way to surprise his/her mother on Thanksgiving, redditor blood_money’s father called him. The poster’s brother had just shot himself in the head, the father said. Blood_money would later watch him die in the hospital, and then clean up the room where the act had been done.
“Talking about this makes me want a drink,” blood_money wrote.
Meanwhile, igobyalexis was 13 when his/her father died in an avalanche. Since then the poster, now 24, has had to raise three sisters and take care of a mother debilitated with grief.
And e7plus3 told of how she succeeded in medical school after her husband unexpectedly passed away and left her alone to take care of their three children.
But for fyneartist, the answer to the question was best summed up with a simple action: “Deleting my Mother from my cell phone after she died.”
There were some stories, at least, that touched on lighter fare. D4rkstryder, whose comment now hovers near the top with more than 1,200 upvotes, spent two years renovating a house (he thought it would take six months). The result? A metamorphosis from a veritable dump to a veritable palace.
And Shred_Kid told the tale of a friend, “Tim,” who hiked through the Himalayas with a group he thought were friendly tourists — but were, in fact, German drug dealers. Tim then “got in a shootout with a tribe, ran from people who wanted to kill him, found his way back to civilization after two weeks with no supplies except for a hatchet, all while having malaria.” Then, “like a boss,” he demanded his money back from the travel agency who set up the trip.
“Please make this into a feature film,” wrote redditor bloqs in response.
Why bother? It’s already been posted on Reddit.