Perseverance

I believe that perseverance is taught by example, the concept itself is nebulous without examples. Talk is particularly cheap unless one leads by doing. It may be inherent, and I believe that it is to varying degrees, but it has to be refined to fit the situation at hand.
I got through the death of my mother when I was eighteen and newly enlisted in the Marine Corps, by dedicating myself to living in a way that would have made her proud. It helped that I had very little time to dwell on my misfortune of leaving home, and then having no home to return to, all in the course of a few months. You need a purpose to help you through trauma, and having friends with a purpose helps a lot.

I see extraordinary perseverance constantly in my role as a teacher. I often know enough about certain students that I admire how happy they are in spite of missing their parents, or being too poor to have warm clothes in the winter, and so many other things that should remain private. I can never forget a young group of siblings that I absolutely loved, whose parents were both incarcerated. One day they were all removed by the social worker, and they dropped by in the middle of class to tell me goodbye.

I asked my assistant to take over my class so that I could speak to them.
The social worker granted me a few minutes. I fought back tears, as I asked them to listen to me, and listen good. All I told them was that I wanted them to promise me two things. Take care of each other, and take your education seriously. I did not want to cry in front of them, so I told them they would always be in my heart, hugged them, and walked quickly away, and had a quick, private cry. That was a tough, tough day. I have never seen them again.

To Bee or Not to Bee

To Bee or not to Bee

I was raised as a worker bee. I realize in hindsight, that the work ethic instilled in me by my parents and environment presupposed that I would find an organization to employ me. I cannot recall a single discussion with anyone, during my childhood or adolescence, that ever even toyed with the concept that I might use my own creativity to self-design a legal avenue for my livelihood. There was a clear expectation that I find someone or somewhere that had work I could do.

We are all products of our environment. My formative years in Joliet, Illinois, during the 1960's and 1970s were impoverished, but tempered by the fact that there were lots of jobs. I hated being broke, and my family needed the money, so I worked a lot, from grade school, passing papers, through high school, working thirty or more hours a week, as a stock boy at the grocery store. I was so tired at school, working half way through the night. I'm sure that I was only half the student I could have been. I was not thinking about the value of my education. I was focused on fattening up my next check.

I do not recall even entertaining any thought, of ever really being wealthy during my entire upbringing. I was too busy working. I felt very fortunate when I could get enough extra work to make another fifty bucks. That really seemed like big money back then.

I was a total worker bee. I just wanted to find a company to work for.

It was completely beyond my schema to consider that I could create a business of my own. The concept that marketable creativity could emanate from me, was in a pre-embryonic state, in my mind.

It took a sea change in how I viewed myself to go to college. I was not ready when I got out of high school. I still chose to stay close to my mental constriction as a worker bee, and chose to pursue an education degree. I do have to take a moment right here, to say that I never regretted my choice to be a teacher.

As I began to matriculate through college, I became aware of the dramatic differences in personal expectation that people had for their futures. It became obvious to me that some of the people I had come to know had literally been raised with the expectation that they would assume positions of leadership, early in their adulthood. I was fascinated by the contrast in our expectations and perspectives. I had been raised with the expectation that I would seek out someone to lead me, and sign my checks of course. They fully expected that they would be the leaders and check signers.

My paradigm has changed. I still work my day job, but work on creative writing, during my down time. I am pursuing my masters', degree, as an administrator. Go figure. The years have changed me, and my perspective.

I happen to have found the children's book writer within me.

I see value in doing what my muse requires. My actions are not always like the worker bee anymore, I have sought to fulfill my own vision, as opposed to laboring exclusively on someone else's. I have unleashed my first and second books into the world. My metamorphosis continues. I hope you enjoy Willie's Dad, the author's reading, and invite you to tell those people who could find value or a measure of redemption in the story.