As a continuation of last week’s entry (On Creative Endurance), which only hinted in passing at the rewards awaiting the one who endures through that period of every endeavor known as the Valley of Disappointment, I’d like to offer this encore of additional encouragement to stay the way—to abide.
Keeping up the (super solid) tradition started just last week, we rely, once again, on The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis) to introduce the problem. In this particular portion of Lewis’ masterpiece, the senior demon Screwtape is telling his junior-demon nephew how the difficulty humans have persevering makes “[t]he long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity [] excellent campaigning weather”:
You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition.
In an on-demand age of cheap dopamine, this struggle to stay true to our commitments seems to only be getting harder for humans. Anybody who has attempted something which requires sustained efforts—whether writing books or blog posts, building a brand or a business, training for an event, or even maintaining a marriage—has felt the pressures of the force which opposes our dedication to the path. It’s part of the force that Steven Pressfield (in the War of Art and Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be) refers to as Resistance:
What is Resistance? It’s our own tendency—yours and mine and everyone’s—to yield to procrastination, self-doubt, fear, impatience, self-inflation, self-denigration, distraction, laziness, arrogance, complacency, and perfectionism. It’s our inability to focus, our incapacity to press on through adversity. It’s our terror of finishing and exposing our work to the judgment of the marketplace. It’s fear of failure. It’s fear of success. Fear of humiliation. Fear of destitution. It’s our inability to defer gratification, to acquire and act with self-discipline, self-validation, and self-reinforcement. Resistance is our tendency to self-sabotage, fail to start, and fail to finish.
Resistance is the negative force that wants us to run before we’re done and forego all the fruits which don’t fall until the end. But there is something else in us—something higher—that wants us to stay until the good part. It is the voice of the higher angels of evolution that wants us to abide. The spirit of the ideal that John and the Gospels identify as Christ:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch is not able to bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one abiding in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit. For apart from Me you are able to do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown out like the branch and is dried up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire, and it is burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you wish, and to you it will come to pass. (John 15:4 - 7).
Only the branch which abides bears fruit. Only the seed which remains grows strong. It’s a metaphor used also by the Stoics to advocate on behalf of patient persistence: We are like “the seed buried for a season, hidden, growing gradually so it may come to full maturity. But if the grain sprouts before the stalk is fully developed, it will never ripen…” (Epictetus, Discourses, 4.8.35b–37).
We see the wisdom and benefits of staying the course illustrated in the hockey-stick graph and captured in various clichés about the benefits of compounded effort (and interest) that we’ve all seen and heard (see below).
We reference these things when telling others why they ought to keep going, but still find ourselves privately questioning if it’s really true or if it’s just a comforting thing we say to each other.
That’s where I find myself at this very moment: in the dog days of editing my second book, publicly preaching in this post about why we ought to abide, all while knowing that each morning finds me fighting the temptation to abandon my efforts, just before I sit down to write. (So trust me when I say that this message is as much for me as it is anyone else.)
The chronic renewal of our self-doubt and pessimism (which is always returning to us in the days when we’re weary of the work) is why it’s good to occasionally encounter evidence that the hopes we hold—the hopes which sustain us—are, indeed, still experienced in reality.
Such evidence arrived for me just today, when Chris Williamson (wicked smart host of the Modern Wisdom Podcast and all-around great guy) shared some reflections this morning, on what is the 5th anniversary of his first episode. To quote Chris in his post sharing the below graphic (which shows monthly audio plays over time): “The show was essentially totally invisible for the first 3 years. Which was 300 episodes in. I did more plays last month than the entire first three years of Modern Wisdom combined.”
I have no doubt that in the first three years of podcasting, Chris fought more than his fair share of battles against the temptation to move on to other things that offered a quick hit of validation. But he stayed on the course and kept walking into the wind. Through three years of Resistance assaulting his will, he stood strong and found a way to stay on the path. What can we say but the words of the Big Lebowski: “the Dude abides.”
And in doing so, he received what comes to all who abide: the sweet yet sustaining fruits of long labors.
May his efforts be an inspiration to us all.
Whoever you are and whatever you’re after, may this be your reminder: don’t give up before you get to the good part.
Don’t run.
Abide.
Yes, and now is the perfect time to get back into the game if you have stopped for whatever reason.
Thanks for the timely reminder to step back and see the potential of staying in the path. 👍🏽