Last updated on June 11th, 2025 at 11:17 am
What does it mean to persevere?
Does it mean to arrive at a foreign place not ventured before, or does it mean going beyond limits to realise what true worth of the self is? I’ve recently walked both paths. And like slow moving waters of reflection, ever shifting – never still, I arrive at a sea of vastness. Myself – a sole island
For me, perseverance is a solitary journey ahead. What keeps me going is my potential. I don’t know what that is, and I know that only through knowing I am not there yet.
I am but a sunlight on a stream, fading like an echo. And it is this appreciation of temporal existence that urges me on. Through the ebbs and flow of life, I want to know I did my best.
Anything less simply isn’t an option.
A few years ago I lost my job. In the same year I lost my savings. In September 2021 I had exactly £0.54 pence in the bank, with no income.
I reluctantly asked my Father for support. My Father was in all respects a self-made individual. It’s the first time I’ve used the past tense to refer to my Father, a painful realisation to behold. I asked him once how he’d managed to afford us a comfortable life on a modest income. His response was etched in experience, “for every pound I earn, I save a pound fifty”. It was through sacrifices upon himself he afforded us our wants.
Often he’d reuse my tatted worn shoes, my tarried scathed belt. Whilst I was spending the equivalent of a week’s worth of a food shop on a jumper, my Father would stretch every penny, so that his family didn’t have to. It is true what they say, you only appreciate something when it’s gone. Like the love a Father has for his Son. As I am from him, how could I possibly know the extent of that which came before. Yet only now I begin to feel what he felt (and still feels) for me, when I look upon my Son, knowing he too can never truly know what it feels like to love your child, only until he has his own someday.
For the past births the present and today dictates tomorrow. Potential shines when stirred by action. Like the sunlight on a stream, perseverance reveals its beauty when we keep moving forward.
What helps is having complete awareness of what your Goal is. A single, myopic, crystalised Goal, that propels you forward each day. This silent force allows you to press forward with patient strength, widening the expanse of new areas and white spaces yet to be coloured in. Inviting growth and abundance.
Three and a half years on from September 2021, I have managed to gain a level of security in every area of my life that ensures lasting success, built from the ground up. My conscious efforts to always view things as optimistically as possible through clear and positive eyes, and to always keep my thoughts at the highest of peaks, has allowed me to see innumerable blessings and opportunities otherwise not possible.
I remember with poignant memory, sitting on the floor of my bedroom; alone, distant, defeated. Feeling a coldness of failure and fatigue. Not knowing how I would afford the payments of mortgage, bills, food. I had nothing. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I know exactly what that feels like, and had I not, I am 100% sure I would not be in the position I am today.
In the space of 42 months, I have my beautiful two children, I have made an offer on my dream home, I have contended with loss and life, and most of all, I have built up a resilience to keep on going. I share this only to show it can be done. When asked, how did I do it? the answer that is clothed in hardship and belief is – perseverance.
It’s a word born out of struggle, not something stitched to a fabric of a motivational quote. Its roots trail back to the concept of abiding with strictness to a task, showing that it’s meaning runs far deeper than what is seen. Perseverance is a whisper, a silence, an unseen force of uncompromising potential. Found in the decisions we have and will continue to face in personal pursuits – whatever they may be.
For me, it’s found in the 4.30am alarm, the 3.5 hour commute to work, the 7:00pm evenings when I arrive back home, knowing that I won’t be there in the mornings to see my children smiling, and I won’t be there in the evenings to read to them before bedtime. It’s found in the financial sacrifices to make sure I achieve my monthly saving target, the strains of a demanding career, the doubts and exhaustion of life.
But I keep pressing forward.
Grit – Faith – Need
Having a reason bigger than myself is what helps me to persevere, and that reason is and will forever be my Wife and Children. In their eyes I see a future I am responsible for shaping, for colouring, for bringing into fruition. It’s easy to measure life in outcomes alone, but for me it’s the decision to keep on showing up which matters most.
We tend not to like the simple answers. We incline more towards the complex, articulate and well-defined responses, thinking in some way that the more information to an answer one has, the more likely that is true.
It’s the simple art of keep on going and never giving up