What can you endure?

FDR in 1941

Wie geht's?

What does it take to endure? According to Ryan Holiday in Discipline Is Destiny, it takes pushing through frustrations, pushing through criticisms and loneliness. Pushing through pain.

I know a little about this (I stress - a little). As I've written about before - from a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, and a teacher with a Master's degree in English. As I steadily failed everything at school, got turned down twice to join Teachers' College, and received a staggering number of rejection letters for jobs, I endured.

The back pain that I wake up with every day is something I endure. People have passed away who I care about deeply, but I endure.

I'm not special - everyone in the blogosphere can name similar things.

And there are plenty of inspirational stories and examples from the past, but I find the story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt especially encouraging.

He was struck down in the prime of his life by a virus that left him permanently paralysed from the waist down. His recovery took seven years of painful physical therapy and exercise. He laboriously taught himself to walk short distances while wearing iron braces on his hips and legs, by swiveling his torso while supporting himself with a cane.

FDR refused to accept his fate and became the only US President to serve more than two terms in office (an amazing four) through the depression and then World War II.

Ryan Holiday:

We will taste pain on this journey through life. That's a fact. We will be given a million opportunities to stop, and a million reasons why that's okay.

But we can't. And it's not.

We keep going.

We put our butt in the chair.

We will not be deterred.

Love and peace - Woz