I am grateful for a lot of things today. The challenge today, unlike some days I’ve had this past week, is how to figure out which one or two I’m going to focus on for tonight’s blog. Sometimes I struggle to find one I can feel good enough to write about. Tonight I have too many things to focus on with a brain that is too tired and distracted to string sentences together with laser sharp coherence. I will do my best.
I am grateful as I have been many times recently and throughout this past year for the gift of perseverance and it’s close cousin resilience–the abilities to stand strong and bounce back. Related to those is persistence. Here is how the New Oxford American dictionary defines these three oh-so-important characteristics.
- Perseverance: steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.
- Resilience: able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions.
- Persistence: firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.
If there’s one thing I now clearly know about myself based on how the past 18 months have unfolded it is that I possess these three qualities in no small measure. If I didn’t know before I faced the challenges of this time in my life, I sure know it now. I am grateful for these qualities–that inner fortitude that keeps me getting up in the morning and moving forward. This is not bragging, it is simply the truth. Given the choice between having my butt kicked so that I could determine how strong a person I am and living blissfully ignorant of my inner strength and living a placid, easy life, I’d go for blissful ignorance. But as it didn’t quite work out like that I am grateful that when the going got tough, I dug in, hung on for dear life, stood in the face of the balrog† and planted a flag declaring “You shall not pass!” Which is a fanciful way of saying that I looked my fear and anxiety and depression and sadness in the face and determined that it would not get the best of me. And, it hasn’t.
Persistence got me out of bed this morning at 6 a.m. when I sooooo didn’t feel like it so I could write in my journal, do my morning ablutions and hit the road by 7:30 for a nonprofit career conference that I really didn’t feel like going to. Even when I signed up for it and paid the fee I didn’t want to attend. But, as a job seeker who is thinking about working for a nonprofit organization, it seemed like a good idea. This was my first foray into interacting with other nonprofit jobseekers. It is not necessarily the kind of venue an introverted grumpy person does real well in, particularly when they didn’t feel like going, but I persevered and persisted and went. And as is often the case when I push do something, I find value in it. Two of the four workshops sessions were particularly helpful and thought-provoking and made it worth the getting out of bed, the traffic into Oakland, the parking and registration fees, etc. I credit the success of the day mostly to the power of persistence.
The rest of the day went pretty well, including a fun Facebook chat this evening with my sister Ruth (about whom I’ve written a few times in this blog–she’s one of my favorite people in the world.) I am truly grateful. I will close now–I have to go play my guitar for a few minutes per my new mini-habit. Perseverance, resilience, persistence: three of the many important qualities sprinkled with a healthy dose of gratitude that I hope to continue to cultivate and grow. May it be so!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~†The balrog is a fictional demonic creature found in J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy. In a classic scene from the film the wizard Gandalf, seeking to protect his fellows from the monster confronts it on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in the underground region known as Moria. Gandalf plants his staff in front of the Balrog and declares, “You shall not pass!” I have used this metaphor many times in encouraging myself and some of my coaching clients to take a stand against their fears. Try it next time your Balrog shows up.
