These woods are lovely, dark and deep…

Perseverance is a word which makes me rather uncomfortable.

Not excruciatingly, wrigglingly uncomfortable, but ever so slightly ill at ease.

I’m not sure whether it is the fact that when you say the word aloud it includes the sound of the word “severe” — which, in my experience, is frequently followed by other unpleasant words like pain or punishment, or at the very least implies the possibility of (dire) consequences — but all the same it’s a word which makes me…squirm.

And yet, weirdly enough, I still chose Perseverance as my Word of the Month for October.

Why?

…but I have promises to keep…

Well, simply put, I chose it because I know how much perseverance counts.

Coming from the Latin word perseverantia, meaning “abiding by strictly”, perserverance is defined as steady persistence in a course of action, particularly in spite of difficulty, delay, or discouragement.

Perseverance requires rigour. It demands discipline. It shuns shortcuts, and makes a motto of Robert Frost’s oft-quoted phrase “the best way out is always through”. It is found in long evenings that stretch into the night, and also in the small hours, before the dawn and the next day’s deadline. It is not an easy bedfellow — perhaps because when you need perseverance, sleep is one of the things you’re most likely to have to sacrifice.

And yet, perseverance gets the job done.

…and miles to go before I sleep…

Because perseverance is all about endurance, and seeing something through until the very end, regarless of the obstacles and setbacks encountered along the way. It is more than practice. More than patience. It is simply more — because there is always something more to do, even after the longest day.

So even thought it is not something that makes me comfortable, I am grateful for perseverance. Because steady persistence is something I can do — and even strict abiding when it’s called for.  And, along the way — though further along, much further sometimes, than I’d like to admit — I can see that when I persevere, I progress. I improve. Perseverance may involve sustained effort, but in the process I, too, am sustained.

This October, therefore, I wish you the perseverance to persist as you continue on your journey, whatever it may entail and wherever it will lead you. Because the best way out is always through — and sometimes along the way, often when the path is most difficult, we discover things within ourselves that enable us to endure, and which sustain us for many miles more than we can even begin to imagine.

…and miles to go before I sleep.