the final word Coronadans share their thoughts on
PERSEVERANCE
Perseverance is often contemplated on a large scale. Olympic athletes returning season after season to finally get their gold or the high school football team finally making it to the state championships after years of falling just shy. But perseverance is so much more than that. Perseverance is the little girl getting back on her bicycle after her 100th fall. Perseverance is the small business owner opening their shop each morning despite the uncertainty of a successful sales day. Perseverance is the flower growing between the cracks in the pavement, seemingly devoid of water or nutrients yet blooming just the same. We persevere when we dare to get back up and take one step closer to our goal, despite the obstacles laid out before us.
About perseverance some one once said “Perseverance gives power to weakness and opens to poverty the world’s wealth,” which amply defines the word: “to continue resolutely despite difficulties encountered.” We don’t have to look very far to see and think about the capital P the entire world has been living through (and with the new variant, it still is), to think of the world’s reaction to it, replacing Pandemic with the word Perseverance. Rarely, even in the World Wars of the last century has something touched the entire population of the worldregardless of political, cultural, and geographic differences. And with that has come the most inclusive and encompassing example of Perseverance. Remember the words “despite difficulties encountered,” and reflect on the human spirit and the all-encompassing will to live, exemplifying Winston Churchill’s unforgettable exclamation “Never, never give up!”
“Earn a scholarship!” The words my father would tell my three sisters and I every day as he left for work in the morning. The words I know he will continue to tell me this school year, my senior year. The words I will miss hearing from him post-graduation. Although they were always said lightheartedly and as a benediction of sorts, they reinforced an important ideal in my household: to persevere. Whichever side of the Atlantic the Navy sent my family to, wherever college sent my older sisters, perseverance as a family unit has kept me grounded. Although “earning a scholarship” didn’t mean anything to me as a third grader, I now take the phrase as a daily reminder of the importance of never giving up, the value of giving your all and giving your best so that one day, in the very close future, I will finally earn that scholarship.
Perseverance is a mindset with which I have an ongoing relationship. Like many people, I struggle with a mental illness, in my case depression, which can make day to day life a struggle. More often than not, perseverance means getting through the small things until I make it to better days. Of course, I’m also a writer which means, yes, this is heading towards an analogy. When I sit down to start a piece of writing, sometimes getting the first sentence or even word out is the hardest part while staring at a blank page. But word by word, sentence by sentence I continue building. It won’t be perfect, I’ll have to edit and rewrite, but eventually I create something ready to be published and shared with the world. And then I go back and do it again, and I hope it’s a little bit better each time. For me, hope and perseverance go hand in hand, for what are we persevering for if not in the hope of something yet to come?
Perseverance Highly successful people have failed miserably on their way to success. We all know them. What did they have in common? They all persevered. Steven Spielberg was rejected twice by the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. J.K. Rowling was a divorced, single mother down on her luck, but she penned a novel that made her richer than the Queen of England. President Lincoln failed in the military, failed at business and failed in politics only to go on to be arguably one of our best presidents. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first TV job and Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Let’s face it – life isn’t easy and if it is, you probably aren’t living it to the fullest. We all face adversity, disappointment or defeat but we try again, we persevere - and that is the only way we ultimately succeed.
Danielle Adams, Officer, Coronado Police Dept.
Rich Brady, Brady’s Men’s Shop
Caroline Chesnut CHS Class of 2022 Editor, CHS Islander Times
Brooke Clifford Coronado Magazine Coronado Eagle & Journal
Kelly Purvis City of Coronado Arts Administrator
P82 | Coronado Magazine
