Perseverance is not Control

When I was young, there was a phrase: “Keep on keeping on.” I’m not saying that there’s something wrong with perseverance. There’s nothing wrong with continuing to do what you need to do but sometimes what you need to do changes. Sometimes we fall into that Einstein loop of repeating the same thing and expecting different results, of choosing door number two and expecting what was behind door number one. Being disappointed is a valid response. Staying in a place of anger or regret, or perhaps worse, denial can end up being a self damaging choice. Remember when you first began to bleed or when your balls dropped, when your ankles kept showing at the bottom of your pants because your legs were growing? It’s kind of like that every time your life shifts.

We’ve been brainwashed to believe that we can make things be the way we want them to be or worse the way other people tell us they need to be. We do have choices. You get to decide what matters most to you. I often think about what I would do if I lived in some remote location where all my needs were met in a simple and beautiful way. I imagine that many of the things that I worried about at different stages of my life would simply fall away.

We humans are funny. We get upset when it rains. We take it personally. There are a lot of new dragons and demons in this world. The planet is burning and drowning, and being buffeted by cyclones. Identity scams swarm like summer mosquitoes, but as Gilda Radner used to say “There’s always something.” So what’s the point? Maybe the point is to be like the little bird that sings every morning no matter what the weather is like. The little bird that still flies away from the hawk and fluffs its feathers and huddles against the storm. I’m not talking Disney birds. I’m also not talking about a horror flick. Life isn’t take-out. You can’t order exactly what you want. Life is more like a buffet. There’s some of the best food you’ll ever taste. Some things are stale. Or burnt. And once in a while, one of the cooks gets distracted and mixes up the salt and the sugar.

My point is that we control our choices but there are no guaranteed outcomes. And that’s okay because each outcome comes with the opportunity to make another choice. Don’t kid yourself that doing the same things over and over, that putting all your energy into whatever you previously decided was necessary to do will get you where you want to go. Reevaluate regularly. Refresh your choices if they don’t match what you currently think is important. Stop making your bed to earn points with the Universe. Make your bed but do it because you want to do it. Pause. Breathe. Stop running toward or away from whatever. Stroll. Take your time. It is yours after all. Use it to be in your life. Not to run towards something you used to think was important.

Hard work is a good thing. So is diligence. But doing either blindly — not so much. Can you see your own life? When you look at it, whose eyes do you use? Make sure you’re using your own eyes, the eyes you have now, not the ones you used to have. Remember the jingle: “You deserve a break today”? Well you actually do. And not just today. Every day. A break from rushing toward proving your own worth. Be good. To others. To yourself. That’s what makes you good.

Cinse Bonino
2023