Perseverance The Secret to a Better Life and Spiritual Enlightenment
November 20, 2008
In ninth grade I used to hang around with a couple of boys who had a tree house. We fixed it up a bit and became very proud of it. It was about 25′ high. We could see all the way down to the river over all of the roof tops when we sat in it at night. It was fancy for a tree house, with two floors and a back porch. The only difficult with the back porch was that it was made out of flimsy plywood. If one stepped down onto it the wrong way it would simply fold itself up, toss him or her 25′ to the ground, and then spring back up. Otherwise, it was fine. (After stepping on it the wrong way once, one never did it again. It was a learning tool.)
We also had a long nylon rope hanging down from a branch near the tree house. A person coming up could take the long way up the tree, or just climb the rope. At first I could not climb that rope and was ashamed to let anyone know.
I remember looking at the other two boys climbing the rope all the time. I was tired of going the other way. I had to learn to climb that rope.
I waited until no one else was around and started trying to climb, using the same movements as the others. After only about two pulls my arms were exhausted. My palms felt as if they were being torn by the rope, but I kept going. I was determined and I made it. The same thing often occurs with other things in our lives. Sometimes we want something so bad that we even dream about it. We watch others doing what we would like and cannot even begin to think of ways to attain the skills needed to sing, dance, work with computers, or whatever.
The secret to attaining what we want, I think, is the same as the secret of climbing the rope. The only secret was time, determination and practice. If we can take the time to do the many small steps necessary to work toward the attainment of our goals, it is very likely that we will achieve them some day.
As for the rope. Later the next day we met in the back yard. We decided to climb into the tree house like so many times before. I walked over to the rope, tested it, and began to climb. All my friends looked on “slack-jawed,” until I finally got to the top. When we all finally got into the tree-house one of them said, “I didn’t know that you could climb the rope.” I answer, “Oh yeah?” and that was how the conversation ended.
If we take the steps to care for ourselves and to develop the skills that we need to obtain our goals, perhaps some day we will be doing something and a friend will suddenly turn to us with a pleasant smile and say, “That was great. I didn’t know that you could do that.” We can then look at them, tilt our head slightly to the side and thoughtfully answer them, “Oh yeah?”
Dr. John W. Gilmore is a writer, a spiritual director, a certified healer, a martial arts instructor, and an ordained minister. To read more articles like this visit this ezine or our free Practical Spirituality Journal at http://www.dswellness.com. There you can explore our website in detail and our absolutely free Circle of Creation Spirituality and Stress Reduction 101 at our cyber school.
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