My mom has had the same email signature for as long as I can remember:
Be as persistent as the sun.
If you asked me to title a chapter of my life “The Hard Years”, I’m not sure I could point to one stretch of time and say that’s it. Life has taught me that anything can change in an instant and the ground can shift beneath your feet without warning, no matter how settled things may seem. What actually matters isn’t which years to get to be called hard. It’s how you react when the shifting happens.
I haven’t always been persistent. There have been plenty of moments I gave into the dark, sat in it longer than I needed to, let it convince me it was permanent. But the thing I keep coming back to, the thing that has actually carried me through nearly every time, is that there will always be light. The sun will always keep rising on schedule whether anyone’s watching or not. It doesn’t negotiate with the night.
That’s the kind of persistence I strive for. Not the gritted teeth, force my way through kind, but the quieter kind that continues to show up because it knows whats coming. Even when I am surrounded by dark, even if i can’t feel it yet, remembering that the light is already on its way gets me through.
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