One of these days when I sit down to write my book about gratitude there’s going to be a huge chapter on perseverance, persistence, and resilience. If I were to do a search of this blog over these 391 days and entered the word perseverance, my guess is that at least two thirds of the blog posts would pop up. And that makes sense. Over the course of the past year and a half, perseverance, persistence and resilience have been among my most oft-called upon attribute. While I am indeed grateful to have an apparently strong reserve of perseverance in my tank, I would love to develop some of my other valuable such as my ability to offer wise counsel, mentoring skills, generosity with financial resources as well as time and energy. But for now, it appears that perseverance is the particular muscle I’ll be flexing most.
The dictionary defines perseverance as, “steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.” I like that better than the definition of the verb form to persevere, which says, “continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no prospect of success.” Ouch! It kind of makes it sound like anyone who continues in such a course of action is completely daft–if there’s little prospect of success, why would one continue in it? Simlilarly, the word persistence is defined as “firm or obstinate continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition,” and to persist is to “continue firmly or obstinately in an opinion or a course of action in spite of difficulty, opposition, or failure.” Yikes, this hardly seems like an attribute to be celebrating, given the definitions. Nevertheless, I am going to stick with my gratitude that I am able to stand steadfastly in the face of difficult circumstances and do my best to move forward. I remain hopeful that there are at least a few prospects of success. And as for obstinately continuing in a difficult situation, where obstinate means “stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action,” I have no choice but to conclude that I must be even more daft than the average person, because I’m pretty determined to persist.
What is the alternative then? What does it mean to not persevere? When I looked up persevere in the thesaurus it include this impressive list of words and phrases:
“persist, continue, carry on, go on, keep on, keep going, struggle on, hammer away, be persistent, be determined, see/follow something through, keep at it, press on/ahead, not take no for an answer, be tenacious, stand one’s ground, stand fast/firm, hold on, go the distance, stay the course, plod on, stop at nothing, leave no stone unturned; informal soldier on, hang on, plug away, stick to one’s guns, stick it out, hang in there.”Likewise, under perseverance it listed these synonym:
persistence, tenacity, determination, staying power, indefatigability, steadfastness, purposefulness; patience, endurance, application, diligence, dedication, commitment, doggedness, assiduity, tirelessness, stamina; intransigence, obstinacy; informal stick-to-it-iveness; formal pertinacity.Under antonyms there was a single phrase: give up. That’s it?? “Give up?” What does that mean? When one is in the process of healing and transitioning through a challenging phase of life, what does giving up even look like? When I consider the fact that I had people depending on me and my ability to stand strong and stay sane over these past 18 months, I could not afford to even explore the notion of giving up. I could not shrug and say, “Oh well, I give up. Things are hard and there’s no point in trying to do anything because ‘there’s little or no prospect of success.'” No, you put your head down and bull through as best you can because you cannot afford to give up, too much depends on your finding whatever minuscule prospect of success there is to be had. No, I don’t think giving up was or is an option for me at the moment.
Mind you, I understand the concept of surrender in the sense that you cease fighting and struggling long enough to quiet your mind and heart and get a sense of what the universe might be trying to tell you about what’s happening in your life. I can definitely resonate with this concept of surrender, but that is not at all the same thing as giving up. I will spend a bit more time pondering this notion of persevering and it’s alternative (whatever that is…) but until I am solidly convinced that there’s a better way, I’ll keep right on persevering, thank you very much. I am grateful for the measure of strength that I have and do not take it for granted. I am glad that I can’t imagine what giving up would look like–I hope I don’t ever figure that out. I would love to not have to employ the gifts of perseverance and persistence on a daily basis as I do now; I look forward to easier days and can still imagine what those might look like. In the meantime, I will continue to stand strong as best I can, even with the occasional wobbly knees, drooping shoulders and tired mind. I will do so obstinately and proudly and with deep gratitude that I can.
