Girl in Bambur

Even at 10 years of age,                                                                                                           she wears her perseverance                                                                                                   like a woman:                                                                                                                           jaw set,                                                                                                                                           bare-shouldered,                                                                                                                       arms akimbo.    

If she were older,                                                                                                                         an ebony man–                                                                                                                   caught in the fine fire of her eyes–                                                                                         might love her.    

But she would neither see nor hear him.                                                                         Fixed in the foothills of Bambur,                                                                                                 her heart has already moved beyond                                                                                  the Benue River to cities                                                                                                   below.       

There, young women with smooth hands                                                                   carry books and ride on the backs of motorbikes.   

There, streets fill with roasting chickens                                                                                 and conversation.              

 And there, sheathed in that                                                                                                 rare purple cloth of opportunity,                                                                                           she might begin again,                                                                                                         wearing her perseverance                                                                                                           into new life.

Shannon Vesely

In the sanctuary of perseverance, card-carrying members begin again. And again and again. They prefer the word grit. Sharper and more guttural, it packs a true punch to the gut. Determination, in contrast, often rolls too easily off the tongue, dissolving into the air of good intention.

Since the beginning of time, people have persevered, buckling on the breastplate of grit and taking on the world, one act, one choice at a time. History is peopled with perseverants of all sizes, shapes, nationalities, and faiths. More recently, however, psychologist Angela Duckworth has made grit the centerpiece of her research and subsequent books. In profiling her work, New York Times contributing opinion writer Judith Shulevith writes:

Grit. The word has mouth feel. It sounds like something John Wayne would chaw on. Who wouldn’t want grit? Wusses. Forget ’em.

Who wouldn’t want grit? Only the wusses and the too-delicate among us? Perhaps. From her research, Duckworth argues that grit more reliably predicts success than either talent or I.Q. and that any individual–regardless of his or her current perseverance quotient–can learn to live and act with grit. Duckworth’s claims fly in the face of other prevailing arguments like you are either born with talent or you are not and success is largely a matter of luck. 

I recall an anecdote from one of Duckworth’s books I read a few years ago in which she described how high school seniors identified as at-risk were taught practical ways to be gritty as they began their college careers. Their high school teachers counseled them to sit in the front row on the first day–and every day–of class, to introduce themselves to the professor before they left the first day, to actively take notes, and to ask one relevant question, daily, throughout the remainder of the semester. Duckworth writes that, as she and her research assistants tracked these students, they discovered that they had been overwhelmingly successful: in course completion, in passing grades (and in many cases, better-than-passing grades), and in overall collegiate success.

Having read much of Duckworth’s research, I found it to be compelling enough to bring to my high school staff through professional development. As you can imagine, when I presented her research in front of a group of 90 teachers, it was much like preaching to the choir. In genuine John Wayne fashion, teachers insisted that students today are soft; they just don’t have any grit and our students don’t look at failure as an opportunity to improve but rather an easy excuse to quit. Truthfully, from my vantage point as a 40 year educator, I could only nod knowingly. It was far too easy for me to lapse into sentimentality, ruing the loss of grittier times and students.

In his 2008 book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell describes what he has termed the 10,000- Hours Rule:

The 10,000-Hours Rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day. 

In the sanctuary of perseverance, the hardy wholeheartedly embrace the 10,000-Hours Rule. You stick to it, you buckle down, you fail and then you learn from your failures. Arms akimbo, you square your shoulders to the world and growl: Bring it on. Make my day. 

And all this conjures up images of tough guys and gals, hardier and grittier than us common folk who, on even our best days, find it truly tough to persevere in the face of disappointment, obstacles, and outright failure. Our spirits may be willing, but, too often, our flesh is weak. We retreat to less challenging realms.

Still, I think it all too stereotypic to hold fast to such images of gritty machismo. Consider Mother Teresa, the Saint of the Gutters, frail and aging, persisting in the slums of Calcutta. And if this is not enough, consider the painful reality that her secret letters have revealed: she spent almost fifty years without sensing the presence of God in her life. Fifty years of persisting, of living as though she would, someday, sense God’s presence. Fifty years of serving the world as God’s hands, feet, and heart. Now that’s grit of a spiritual magnitude that I cannot begin to comprehend.

In a letter to the Rev. Michael Van Der Peet, September, 1979, Mother Teresa wrote:

Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me–The silence and the emptiness is so great–that I look and do not see,–Listen and do not hear.

Decades–not days–of silence and great emptiness. The persistent urge to listen in hopes of hearing. Mother Teresa could teach Angela Duckworth a thing or two about grit.

Today, perseverance seems to be an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual habit to which the world pays loads of lip-service, but to which it frequently falls tragically short. I’ve taken Duckworth’s grit survey, which gives you a type of personal grit quotient based on your responses. Like most, I am painfully aware of my own grittiness–and lack thereof.

But there is good news: in the sanctuary of perseverance, there are always do-overs if you can muster the grit to begin again. Throughout my life, I have witnessed the power of perseverance in the most likely and unlikely places, through the most likely and unlikely people. These people and places have inspired me to imagine myself as a Dust Bowl mother, cloaking my children in love to keep out the dirt and want; as a young Jewish woman in Auschwitz, sleeping on a hard wooden bunk with five others, pulling myself into and out of dreams of one-day love and life in the Polish countryside beside my husband, my soul-mate; as a young Civil Rights’ activist in Natchez, Mississippi, pushing the cause forward by day, hiding in seclusion at night, and holding fast to the belief of a new day and age; as Nigerian girl living her days with her baby brother tied to her back, envying other girls who spend their days with books and prospects of life beyond the village; and as a young writer, holed up in a forgotten corner of a college library, struggling to eke out those words that might take her to places she had never imagined.

In Daniel James Browns’ best-selling book, The Boys in the Boat, he chronicles nine American rowers’ quest for Olympic gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Writing largely through the perspective of one rower, Joe Rantz, Brown helps us understand his lowly beginnings. Having lost his mother to throat cancer in 1918 and his father to grief and to the wilds of Canada, Joe, age 5, was sent from Washington to Pennsylvania to live with a relative, and then retrieved when his father returned home and remarried. Although for a time, Joe’s life with his new mother and father was pleasant enough for a child who had suffered such trauma, it did not remain so for long. His stepmother could not bear Joe, and with her husband’s consent, banished him.

At age ten, Joe was left to fend for himself, to live in the schoolhouse, to work at the mining camp for food, to persist with any and everything that would sustain his life. Brown writes that Joe’s  world had grown dark, narrow, and lonely. When his teacher taught a science lesson in which she revealed that the cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis radicata, was not only edible, but delicious when stewed slowly, Joe realized that if you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind. 

As I read The Boys in the Boat, I could not help but marvel at Joe Rantz’s persistence in the face of Depression-era poverty, loneliness, and abandonment. How could one so young and so alone take up the mantle of such grit? And yet, he did. Determined to live another day, he scavenged for food, for work, and for self-worth. When, years later, he took up collegiate rowing, this same grit ultimately shaped him into a world class athlete and a genuinely fine human being. Brown’s passages which describe the rowing practices through wind and sleet on Washington lakes are, undeniably, some of the most beautiful and painful prose passages I have ever read.

I suppose in the politically correct world of safe spaces and protections of all sorts, promoting the sanctuary of perseverance is dicey. Someone might be offended by the mere claim that one could improve his or her lot through hours of practice, prayer, and effort. Hours, you say, during which there is no one to applaud you, to comfort you, to sustain you? Hours, you say, during which there are no trophies or awards given to those who participate? Hours, you say, during which there may be blood, sweat, and–gasp–tears? 

No, I’m guessing the PC world will pass on perseverance. But, in the spirit of Joe Rantz, Mother Teresa, and countless other gritty individuals, I am going to press on in the hopes that I will significantly raise my grit quotient and face my world, arms akimbo.