If someone were to ask me what is required for one to live their life fully alive the first thing I would suggest is grit. Without this inner resilience, this phoenix ability, it seems that the heavy side of life might bury one under its sorrows. Without grit dreams can’t come true. Without grit my deepest longings will never be met because they will never be known. An incredible amount of courage is required to open one’s heart to their deepest longings. Yet it is the learning of grit that actually produces what is true and real. Or perhaps grit is not something we have to learn, perhaps it is something we each possess but we have to find. This may be one of suffering’s gifts — the unearthing of the steel in our bones. A resilience that makes those who watch step back in wonder or take off their shoes over the awe of this holy place.
All the great stories are filled with people who find their courage, who discover that they are actually capable of more than they ever imagined.
Grit is depth. Grit is not something one can know they possess until they’ve experienced setback after setback, and continued to stay soft with each blow. This, I think, is the second thing I would say is necessary for one to live fully alive. Softness. Or flexibility. Suffering alone doesn’t expose our courage. Some who suffer become hard, unyielding, resentful, cynical. I understand this. They are only trying to protect their hearts. But although building a fortress around your heart may protect it, it will also stifle all the life. You may not experience as much pain but you won’t experience much joy either.
So how does one allow their inner courage, their grit, to rise when life knocks you down over and over? How does one stay soft when re-enactment happens, the same wounds getting poked and prodded? The same lies being spoken?
You don’t matter.
You’re too much.
You’ll never succeed.
Everyone will leave you.
You aren’t enough.
Your needs don’t matter.
You will always be alone.
On and on it goes. The savagery, the mockery, the cruel laughter that echoes down through the ages. For often our deepest wounds are not only our own. Often they were first spoken generations ago to our great grandfathers and grandmothers who passed them down to our parents and they to us. Often we carry far more than our own shame in our bodies.
What hope is there against such odds? Admittedly, there are days when we despair. There are days when we throw our hands in the air and give up on anything ever changing. But we shall not stay there, shall we?
“What is needed to bring about the new world you yearn for but devotion to its course? Like any practice worth undertaking, it cannot be mastered overnight. But we must keep a vision of how we want our lives and the world to look, and work towards weaving those first threads together. To endure is to make your way through something hard.”
Toko-pa Turner
We endure. Grit. We keep returning to hope. Softness. We press on. Grit. We grieve what we’ve lost. Softness. When all we see are dead-ends, we search until a new path emerges. Grit. We rest when we need to. Softness.
To me, grit and softness are yin and yang, alpha and omega, opposite sides of the same shining coin. All of one or the other and it begins to fall apart. But together they are a powerful, dynamic team, enabling us to do the impossible, bringing us to whole-heartedness and allowing us to live fully alive.