“Endurance. If you’re compiling the necessary ingredients of a person’s character, endurance must by one. I know the word can call up marathons and Gatorade, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t mean ‘the ability to sweat a lot and keep pushing through.’ Endurance is that, but it holds more emotion. It means ‘long suffering.’ To endure. To continue through the pain. And often, enduring pain without the promise of reward. Pushing through only on the faith that it is worth it. There isn’t always a pot of gold at the end. Sometimes it is a mysterious fog up ahead, and you keep pushing because you simply do. You don’t know that you’ll survive the cancer or chronic pain. You don’t know if taking care of your grandmother will drive you mad. But something in you tells you to keep going. Something tells you its right to fight another day. I don’t know how much of that is innate, learned, or willed. I simply know that when someone can hold on through the pain and sorrow and suffering, they are powerful. We little humans have billion of pages of books trying to predict and plan the chaos of life. We have done a pretty good job at it. But the shadow monster of unpredictability looms in the future. And when things don’t go according to plan, or are harder than expected…we can retreat, or push. We can give up, or endure. It is usually those who endure that leaves a legacy.”
-Jedidiah Jenkins