PERSEVERANCE

Most of the time, luck is nothing but
a generic concept to describe capacity,
intelligence, effort and perseverance.
Charles Kettering

If you fall seven times, get up eight.

Chinese Proverb

If you add a little to a little,
and then do it again,
soon that little shall be much.
Hesiod

If you try to hit the moon with a stone
you will not succeed; but you will end up
knowing how to use a sling.
Arab Proverb

While discipline implies method and order in the pursuit of objectives, perseverance implies steadiness and continuity in the pursuit of those same objectives. In other words: behaving without order and method is being undisciplined; changing objectives arbitrarily all the time is being inconstant.

The difference does matter, since many times discipline is understood as perseverance and vice-versa. However, to a certain extent the confusion may be justified since often both virtues go together; as well as their respective vices. Generally speaking, a disciplined person is also persevering and an unstable person will hardly be disciplined. Nevertheless, in this case as in many others, similarity does not necessarily mean sameness.

It is important to be committed to a method and a procedural order in order to pursue an objective. But achieving and fulfilling that objective is not less vital. Let’s not forget that discipline is just a method, a way, a path that with more or less obstacles will lead to an objective. Staying firmly on the path means “to be on the right track”: Granted: this is a lot already. But unfortunately, it is far from being enough. Because to achieve success you have to walk that “right track” right to its very end. Here is where you need perseverance, steadiness and persistence. Here is where you have to be like a bulldog biting a bone and not letting it go until it is crushed. Being on the right track is no big deal if we never reach the goal because we are changing goals and tracks all the time.

Theoretically there are many of these “right tracks” to choose from and every single one of them may lead to an objective we may consider worthy or desirable. The problem arises when we have to admit that it is impossible to tread all paths in a lifetime so there, at some point along the way, we will be forced to make a decision. And, as we all surely know, decisions almost always imply exclusions.

For example, when we choose a profession, we are unavoidably discarding all other professions which we could have also chosen. If we decided to be carpenters we will have discarded being mechanics, marble workers or electricians. If we choose medicine we will have excluded agronomy, science, law, and all those other careers beyond medicine. Truly serious – and sometimes even critical – is that, while we make decisions and choose options as we live, our possibilities narrow and decrease. For that reason, first choices are almost always the most crucial in life, and it is really sad to see how poorly our current culture prepares us to make them.

One of the most tremendous and unfortunate mistakes introduced by egalitarianism is to make us believe that all options are available for everyone; that, theoretically, anyone can (or should be able to) be – or do – anything. There is a gross misunderstanding here which, as a rule, comes from a demagoguery that is as foul as it is perverse. One thing is to have certain professions, activities or jobs monopolized by a social sector and thus banned from the rest, be it by law or as a matter of fact. Another and a very different thing is to claim that in a truly free society absolutely all options should be available and any person should be able to choose and become whatever that given person fancies to desire.

To begin with, it is simply not true that all options can be allowed. Every civilization and culture has always forbidden those options which were considered harmful or detrimental. At a minimum, it has always discouraged activities considered dangerous for the social organism itself. We are social creatures and we make our decisions within a social context. In that social context there will always be options regarded as lawful or unlawful – by whatever criteria they have been ruled or established.

Besides, it is also untrue that – even within lawfulness – anyone can choose any objective in life, because there is something called talent, vocation, calling, natural ability, or whatever you may like to call it, and this, in one way or another, sets limits to what we can become or do.

It is true that most people may manage to learn to play the piano by following the required discipline. It is highly possible that, say, 85% of us could manage to play “For Elise” acceptably well. But if you believe that by playing “For Elise” more or less well you are already a pianist who can play Beethoven, then you are just fooling yourself and you risk  realizing your mistake sooner rather than later. Just try playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 5 and you will see what I mean. And as soon as you try Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, then you will surely find yourself with a whole series of decisions you will need to make regarding your limitations. This leads us to something we all really know: statistically speaking, it may be possible that almost anyone of us can learn to play the piano. But not anyone can become a pianist. And if you have no real God-given talent for it, if you stubbornly insist in the attempt, you may end up like the young respectable lady who tried to impress Chopin by playing his “Minute Waltz”. After she finished, the Maestro thanked her with his best courteous smile for the delightful quarter of an hour he had the pleasure to experience…

The point of the anecdote is something to keep in mind when it comes to evaluating the value of perseverance. If you persevere pursuing an objective for which you have no talent or skill, you then risk the fiasco of spending your life chasing a dream that, at least for you, is unreachable. Do not confuse perseverance with stubbornness. Not yielding and not giving up at the first obstacle is a virtue indeed. But constantly hitting a wall and eventually smashing your head against it is, to say the least, pure nonsense.

The secret of the difference rests in the virtue of truthfulness applied to our own self. Or to put it differently: in being honest with yourself in the first place. At some point in our lives we all have to be honest with our own conscience and admit that we have a talent for certain things and that we do not have it for many other things. So, all options will never be open to all of us.

It is wrong to believe that, always and necessarily, everything is just a matter of preference. We are not always talented for the things we like. Although personal preference and inclination are usually somehow related to our abilities, this is not always and automatically the case.

I did not pick the previous example of the piano and the pianist at random. In our current society the media misrepresent – sometimes hideously – the ideal goals that our youngsters are supposed to pursue. Many teenagers feel inclined to music, but once you look at it closely, it soon becomes abundantly clear that this attraction has less to do with art than with fame, distinction, popularity, fortune and that sort of magic aura that surrounds rock stars promoted by these same media. In this way, a kid who simply “likes” music – and who could very well have absolutely no physical skills nor a fine ear whatsoever for music – ends up dreaming that he will become the lead guitar in a world-famous band. The sad and bitter truth is that most of these young people are irremediably wasting their time by setting themselves music as an objective. A good deal of them end up exercising the harsh discipline of the art only after achieving some sort of recognition and the vast majority quits halfway or even before. And this also holds true, or is quite similar, in other fields such as sports, fashion, journalism and in even far more strict disciplines like economy, business administration, public relations and others. Face it: we are lying to our youth. We are shamelessly telling them blatant lies. We keep making them believe in the mantras of “it’s easy” or “everyone can do it” and, afterwards, ridiculous as it may seem, many people show bewildered surprise at the enormous number of girls and boys who become totally disoriented.

Let’s stop lying to them and you will see how disorientation gradually disappears. Our youth are neither indifferent, nor perverse, nor vicious, nor lazy. Our girls and boys are simply intoxicated by all heaps of lies with which we, grownups, have been feeding them for, at least, the past 30 years.

This is why, unfortunately, today it is very common to see that the first decision a young person makes is not the best one. This is also why nowadays we have no choice but to permit a certain degree of flexibility in questions that relate to perseverance. It is, and continues to be true that changing haphazardly is a behaviour leading nowhere. But it is not less true that chasing the wrong objective is one of the most certain ways of ruining your own life.

In this regard, what should be understood is that in one way or another excellence always prevails and is acknowledged in the end. That is something worth betting on. In broad terms, it does not matter so much what you do. What truly matters is that you are really good at whatever it is that you choose to do or to be. You don’t necessarily have to be the best in the world in your trade; although you can still aspire to the top place if you have exceptional talent and you develop it through discipline and perseverance. But however it might be, it is not really that important if you are a musician, a doctor, an electrician, a lawyer or a construction worker. What truly matters for you is to be a good musician, a good doctor, a good electrician, a good lawyer or a good construction worker.

And this you will attain only with perseverance. By walking the path of discipline from beginning to end. No cheating, no shortcuts allowed. Overcoming obstacles with effort and persistence. Exploiting your talents and your true skills to the fullest. Trust me: there is no other way. Whoever tells you otherwise is lying. We will always hear about the born genius who “leaped” over obstacles with enviable ease but even geniuses have to walk the way. In Argentina, we had a truly brilliant cardiologist; his name was René Favaloro and he is credited with having invented coronary bypass surgery. When asked how he achieved his success, his answer was short. He simply said: “10% inspiration and 90% perspiration”. That 90% of sweat is made of perseverance.

And if you are worrying about money, fame or prestige, my humble advice is that – if you are truly good at what you do – you may as well stop worrying. I know more than one mechanic who earns three times as much as a mediocre lawyer, and I could even tell you the story about a maintenance electrician of a very important company who had more prestige and reputation than the moron of the Plant Manager – a true engineer with all his papers and credentials – who still struggled to understand why by just switching only two wires it was enough to invert the axial rotation of a three-phase motor.

Alright, granted: that particular case was a bit extreme and worthy of being logged in the Guinness Book of World Records, or at least in Ripley’s “Believe It or Not”. But undeserved status is a tall diving platform, and those who jump from it soon discover that the pool in which they are diving has no water.