High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘grit’

It’s no easy thing, to birth springtime.  To burst open the countless buds, to push up the countless blades of grass and stalks of flowers, takes power.

This is more than a smooth transposition of seasons, after all.  This is a resurrection of life from the cold tomb of winter across an entire hemisphere.  It’s a raucous time, the wild escaping of life’s new dreams from their long hibernation.

And so the winds blow, their breath fierce as a lion’s, sweeping along the migrating birds, carrying the last of the snow, testing the new life for toughness.  It will need to be tough; earth life requires some grit, some resilience.

But it requires tenderness, too: hearts that can be moved by kindness, by beauty.  It brings forth delicate creatures, soft and sweet at their births.  And so the March winds blow, their breath as gentle as a lamb’s, ferrying feathery seeds and swaddling the new life in birdsong.

The old man was still stiff when he woke.  With great effort, he managed to prop himself up on his elbow and lift himself to a sitting position on his bed. The pain shot down his spine.  This was the fifth day; it wasn’t getting any better.

He had just finished pulling on his clothes when his son called.  “You want to help me cut some wood?  We’re out,” The younger man said.

Over the years the old man had learned that keeping active was often the cure for aches and pains.  And besides, he had a belly full of ambition that the years just couldn’t use up.  His neighbor lady was out of wood, too, he thought; he’d bring her enough to get her by for a day or two.  And besides, he’d promised her he would bring the Sunday paper.

Clenching his teeth against the pain, he pulled on his heavy coat and boots, tucked the paper under his arm and climbed into his old pick up truck.

He loved the sound of the chain saw cutting through the wood.  And this was cherry; it would burn hot and long.  As he worked with his son in the cold morning, he almost forgot the burning pain in his back.  The two men worked together, the steam pumping from their mouths, for over an hour.  When they were finished, hefty piles of logs filled the beds of their trucks.

Spotting a few scrap slices of wood on the snow, the old man bent to pick them up and threw them in his truck’s cab, smiling.  She would like these, he thought.  She’ll think they’re pretty.

Minutes later, he was knocking at her door.  “Hope you got a pot of coffee going,” he said.  “That cold out there is damp.”

She poured coffee and put a pot of chili on the stove to warm as he told her all the local gossip.  “I didn’t come for the lunch!” he protested as she put a steamy bowl in front of him.  But he ate it greedily and said, “That’s the best chili I ever had.”

They hauled in the logs together and as she lit a fire in the kitchen’s wood stove, he headed back out to the truck.  When he returned, he set four little slabs of wood on her counter top and said, “You might want to take pictures of these.  Pretty aren’t they?”

“That red in the center is called heart wood,” he told her, “and this stuff on the edge is sap wood.  See the rings in the middle?”

He drank another half cup of coffee and pointed out things in the paper that interested him.  Then he slowly pulled himself from the chair, groaning.  “I think I’ll call doc tomorrow,” he said.  “My back’s not better at all.”

She watched through the window as he walked back to his truck, sorry for his pain, and grateful for the wood, with its heart, and for her neighbor, and his heart.  And she was warmed by the kindness and the fire.

“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” ~George Iles

It had been a struggle all along.  The leaves from the oak above her had piled deeply on the soil the autumn before she was born.  It took her so long to push through them that when she finally burst through to the light, she was late.

The others were already putting out their flowers while she was barely a sprout.  But gazing at their accomplishments, she saw what she might become and her spirit filled with determination and her heart brimmed with hope.

The neighborhood was terribly crowded and she was small.  She got only little scraps of sunlight here and there.  But she made the best of what she was given and was happy.

Sometimes the other plants would mock her.  But the oak, in whose roots she nestled, whispered to her to keep faith.  “Don’t you listen to them, little one,” he would say.  “You’ve got grit.  It’s your dreams that matter.  You just keep on keeping on.”

She was the last flower in the woods to finally blossom.  But she had believed all along the day would come.  Even though the hours of darkness grew long, even though the frost nibbled at her leaves, even though the other flowers were long since gone and the great oak had showered down almost all its leaves, her hope kept her going.

And finally, the day before the first snow, her seeds were finished and sailed away, burrowing beneath the fallen leaves where they would spend the winter before bursting to life in the spring.  And the little plant was filled with satisfaction, and the giant oak whispered, “Well done.”

“Grit,” says dictionary.com, is “firmness of character; indomitable spirit; pluck: She has a reputation for grit and common sense.”

I ran into a passel of grit this week and seeing it made me feel proud.

In a time when the dominant slogans for feeling good advise us to take it easy, go with the flow, and steer clear of those things that cause us turmoil, the characteristic of grit doesn’t get much traffic.  And yet, research in positive psychology shows that people who have a fair share of it are generally happier than those with lesser amounts and achieve more than those who lack it – even when they’re less talented.

Grit is perseverance, persistence and exceptional commitment to your aims.  It’s the sustained and focused application of your aptitudes and abilities over time.  It’s the stuff that makes the difference between winners and also-rans.

The director of the clinic where I work showed the staff what grit is this week when she came to work after a surgery that left her with two very black eyes.  She wore rhinestone-studded sunglasses — to keep from scaring us all with her appearance, she said with a laugh.  But I knew it took some courage for this always beautifully groomed woman to work a very visible job with a temporarily disfigured face, especially when she was feeling a fair amount of pain as well.  She could easily have taken the week off, especially since this week held her birthday.  But her commitment to her work and to the staff took precedence for her over her own comfort.

As if the sore and blackened eyes weren’t enough, on Tuesday night she severely injured a deteriorating knee.  But again, she mustered the determination to come to work, walking with a cane, despite the obvious pain and the further insult to her image.   Don’t get me wrong; she’s by no means a vain woman.  Her attention to her appearance is a part of her professionalism.  She maintains high standards in all that she does.

In fact, it’s her exceptional commitment to high standards that exemplifies her grit and that makes her the inspirational leader she is.   An extraordinary string of painful personal challenges have strewn her path over the past couple of years, and not one of them has kept her from carrying the mantel of leadership with fortitude, humility and good humor.

I see her resolve mirrored in the staff as well.  Her example says, “This is how you handle difficulties.”  And employees follow her lead when they face misfortunes of their own.  She shows us what backbone is all about and how to be resilient.  That’s grit.

All winners have it.  Grit carries you through the long spell of practice and preparation necessary to hone your skills and gain the knowledge you need to reach your goals.  It’s what gets you past the inevitable obstacles.  It keeps you in the game when the game gets tough.  It pushes you past setbacks and failures.  It’s the currency that lets you pay the price to win the prize.  And today, I celebrate and applaud it.