The Courage to Endure

Step 6 of GROW’s 12 Step Program is: ‘We endured until cured’. This piece from the GROW Kilkenny Writer’s Group explores how courage is one of the essential ingredients of Endurance.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – President Theodore Roosevelt.

Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The above quote (which appears in Brene Brown’s fascinating book ‘Daring Greatly’) gives much food for thought, but the part about ‘there is no effort without error and shortcoming’ is very relevant to us in GROW. Each week we take a practical task to change some part of our life – be it great or small. Perhaps we forget that we commit to merely make the effort – we are not promising 100% success, since we cannot know beforehand how well our efforts fare.

Roosevelt’s quote reminds us that it is our constant efforts that builds character. It also hints that success or failure can be random. But if we develop the habit of constantly making an effort, then our numerous successes will more than compensate for our equally numerous failures. Perhaps there is only one true failure in life – the failure to make an effort. If we try but don’t succeed, at least we learn from the experience and can do better next time. But we can never learn anything if we don’t take the risk, don’t make an effort. This brings to mind a quote from Maya Angelou: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue consistently”.