Human beings are incredible and resilient. We are adaptive. We persist. There are so many amazing stories about people who persevere through challenging circumstances, ultimately succeeding, often against all odds. These stories are captivating and inspiring. Like Daniel Kish, the blind man who developed a kind of vision that has nothing to do with his eyes which allows him to navigate the world independently and successfully. Or Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. These stories are truly incredible, and they offer us more than just inspiration. They also offer an opportunity to overcome something within ourselves if we're willing to confront it. For Daniel Kish, the absence of people in his life treating him like he couldn't allowed him the freedom and space to try things and fail enough to figure out whether he could. His story offers each of us the opportunity to examine our pre-conceived notions about who is able and identify how those beliefs seep into our actions and shape the world around us. For Elizabeth Blackwell it was incredibly difficult to accomplish what she did in both academia and her subsequent medical practice. A whole lot of people tried quite actively to prevent any of it from happening. And yet she made it. She even created a place for other women to learn medicine and cultivated opportunities for those graduates to also do their residencies. Her story offers us all the opportunity to reflect on our modern health care and education systems, to sniff-out where commonly held beliefs about certain kinds of people are resulting in the same kind of exclusion today, and to figure out what we can do differently in our lives to make space for others to succeed. Mental toughness is a common theme in these and many other perseverance stories. Grit is certainly one of the ingredients in my personal and professional successes. And here is where I'd like us to just pause for a moment and consider where all that mental toughness comes from. Mine is born of tough circumstances. Of course that isn't true for everyone; it is prefect possible to develop mental toughness through practice that isn't also traumatizing. But for me, there were periods of my life I couldn’t escape from, and I either had to give up and stop living or grit my teeth and get through it. Like a lot of people faced with similar circumstances, I survived. And in so doing I developed the skill of surviving shitty circumstances while maintaining the outward appearance of having my shit pretty well together. I do not enjoy that I had to learn how to keep it together during extremely tough times. I don't wish that experience on anyone. And I am also grateful for the skillset of not-completely-falling-apart-in-crisis. It's been quite helpful in dealing with my present post-covid situation. I’m in an interesting place because I spent the earlier part of this year in the process of deconstructing all my long-standing coping strategies and personal survival protocols. Then Covid came along and has changed my brain and body in such a significant way that I have now also been forced into deconstructing my schedule and all my hobbies and social activities and rebuilding the very structure of my entire life. It's quite a challenging process and also a very emotional one. Between personal self-work, emotional regulation, body discomfort and healing, I don't have much juice left in the tank for anything else. Even thought it sucks, I'm going to make it through just fine. Due in part to my mental toughness and in part to the access I have to the incalculably valuable resource of community support. Lingering Covid effects are one of those challenging circumstances that aren't currently preventable. But my perseverance story shouldn't be discounted as having no other lessons to teach us. If we had a better health care system and a real social safety net, I could take the time I need to focus all my energy and effort on healing. As it stands now, I've still got to get all my work done so my family can continue to survive capitalism. Of course surviving capitalism isn't easy for anyone, and it's especially challenging for anyone who didn't start out with access to a pile of money. The people who eventually discovered the MRNA vaccine were initially discounted by the rest of the medical science community. That means they didn't have access to as many grants or other resources necessary to perform their work. But they stuck it out and continued their efforts, eventually making it possible for a covid vaccine to be created in record time. At which point, we all celebrated their achievement and praised their determination. Why do we continue to venerate that aspect of these tales? I think we offer extra praise points for extra suffering to avoid doing the hard work of actually fixing the things that make it so dreadfully difficult to succeed if you're not already successful. Changing the system to ensure future scientists have access to adequate resources sounds like far better thanks than some kudos for discovering a wonderful thing in spite of all the societally-erected barriers. What if these eventual Nobel Prize recipients had support from the beginning? How much less suffering could they have gone through and how much sooner could society have enjoyed the amazing finds they discovered? I feel the same way about almost every story I hear about an oppressed person rising above their oppression to open doors other people get to walk through just for existing. I recently read about Allyson Felix, a many-medaled Olympian. When she became pregnant, Nike drastically cut her endorsement. So she created her own brand of running shoes, overcame adversity, and went on to win more medals. All of which she could have accomplished without persecution. These survival and perseverance stories each have a double lesson available for the taking. One thing I'd like us to take away from all of them is: it doesn't actually have to be so damn difficult. The people who persist and resist and break through barriers definitely deserve appreciation, acknowledgement, and accolades. And also, can we please stop making some people's lives so fucking hard? Imagine the possibilities if all these amazing people could focus their grit and their determination and their creativity on just the thing they're trying to accomplish and not also on surviving the process. Information and Inspiration
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AuthorJaydra is a human in-process, working to make the world a better place. Sharing thoughts, feelings, and observations about the human experience. Archives
November 2023
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