The Value of Persistence

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

~ Thomas Edison

Studying the life of Thomas Edison can help one realize the values of learning and creativity must be accompanied by the value of persistence! Edison was brilliant and extremely creative, and although he is well-known for inventing the telephone (with his close friend, Alexander Graham Bell), he got next to nothing in return. In fact, by the time Edison was well into his twenties, he was penniless - deeply in debt, starving, and living on the streets of New York City.

It was in New York's financial district, though, that his story began to take a turn for the better. He finally landed a job as a fix-it man for a financial corporation there.

"Edison recalled that the incident was more euphoric than anything he ever experienced in his life because it made him feel as though he had been "suddenly delivered out of abject poverty and into prosperity." http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html

Thomas Edison's accomplishments are legendary, but if he had not been persistent in pursuing his dreams, even after countless failures, his name would be meaningless to us.

My take from this brief study... keep on keeping on! The next few months until graduation will be extremely busy, challenging, and exhausting. But if I keep setting my goals, persisting (even if I encounter failures), and keep looking forward, I will get through it all.

I may not be a genius like Edison, but I can still learn great lessons from a great man.

Hope

Those of you who know me realize I struggle with winter in general. I really don't like being cold, and I'm never happier than when the sun is shining, and the sky is blue. As I was on my way out of the door going to work this morning, I glanced over to my flower bed, and what did I see peeking out from the soil?


It doesn't matter that my mind may have been weighted down with worries of the coming day - the meetings, projects, classes, and general stresses - this sight brightened my mood by leaps and bounds. Why? Because, to me, it represents brighter, sunnier, greener things to come; it represents HOPE of a better day.



This lesson can be applied in facing the real challenges in our lives, too... not just enduring trivial weather patterns, but enduring genuinely difficult trials. If we can hold onto hope - hope of a brighter, sunnier, time; hope of a strength gained through enduring the hardship; hope of weathering whatever storm besets us - then somehow our trials become easier to bear. Either that, or our hope strengthens us to be able to bear the trials more gracefully.

So, when you see the trees budding, bulbs peeking through the soil, snow melting, even weeds growing, any sign that our world is awakening with spring in the air, think of something more than the impending allergy season... think of HOPE!