January 5, 2013

Perseverance



I want to know

if you can live with failure
yours and mine

and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,


“Yes.”

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Our Own Druidry describes perseverance as “drive; the motivation to pursue goals even when that pursuit becomes difficult.”

I've persevered through a lot lately. A lot of things should probably have knocked me off this path I'm taking deeper into Druidry. I've spent the last few years being pretty ill, and inertia should have probably dragged me away from my studies. I'm absolutely sticking with it though. I feel that it's important to seek out what's true for me, despite being legitimately tired. Using my studies to ground and balance me out has helped me immensely; it's the perfect counterpoint to being too “in one's body”. I've had many false starts, but I keep picking myself up, dusting myself off, and putting my butt in front of the computer to write, or in my comfy chair to read, or outside to do some talking with the trees. It doesn't always work (in fact, most of the time it doesn't), but I'm determined to complete my Dedicant path work in an appropriate amount of time for me, despite anything that might be dragging me down.

Perseverance requires integrity, both to persevere, and to decide when not to. Being honest with oneself about the worthwhileness of persevering is important. It also requires integrity to decide what defines persevering for you: maybe it's a lot of effort, maybe only a little. Like Oriah Mountain Dreamer states in the quote provided, true perseverance means looking failure straight in the eye and telling it to stand down.

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