Do you ever wonder why some people cave and give up while others hunker down and fight when faced with a hardship? Where does this unstoppable will come from?
Take my mother for example. Her father was killed when she was six. She was the oldest of six children (no, that’s not a typo – her mother had six children in six years – go figure). After her father was killed, her mother, who had always had an uncanny imagination, took herself on a mental trip to la-la land and disappeared. And so my mother stepped up and took care of her younger siblings. Call it will. Call it firstborn grit. Call it – five little pairs of eyes looking up to you and there’s no way you can forsake them. Whatever it was, she had it.
After surviving a childhood of poverty and neglect, and upon graduating high school, my mother was encouraged by church members and family friends to settle down and marry. Learn to cook and sew. But through some fierce impetus of her own, she declined, and willed herself off to college to earn a degree. She’s seventy-nine years old now, and she still hunkers down and pushes through every roadblock the same.
As we know, though, it doesn’t turn out this way for everyone. Some are beaten down. Understandably.
As I think about my mother, I may have a partial answer to this question. While her childhood was filled with tragedy and loss, there were a couple of individuals who reached out and helped guide her. A grandmother who paid for piano lessons. An employer who taught her how to be a good worker, how to be socially appropriate, how to speak up for herself. Having someone stable to look up to, someone who steps in when you most need a rock to hang onto, can be the difference between sinking or swimming.
But then there are other stories, too, of those who never had that loving grandma, who in fact may have had the child-beating, drug-abusing uncle instead, but who asked God for help, started going to church, and found something that gave them guidance and hope.
And we can’t forget plain stubbornness. Those who were born with a good old feisty temperament that could drive everyone crazy but guaranteed their survival, because who was going to take them down? By God, no one. Not me.
What if it’s not just any one thing? Or what if it’s a matter of just – believing. That somewhere inside all of us, there is a will to live, to exist, if we just accepted it with 100% certainty. A part of nature; instinct. If we could just get out of the way of ourselves, if we just allowed the natural flow of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and suffering, maybe there is a will that never leaves us, as long as we listen.
Or maybe it’s not as airy-fairy as that. Maybe it’s as simple as listening to that voice inside – or conjuring it if we need to – that says, “Get the hell up out of the gutter and go find yourself a hot shower. Enough of this. Your circumstances don’t define you.”
Yeah, that one’s my favorite. Sometimes we just need a good dose of tough love from that no-nonsense commander in chief – the stern voice of reason – to get us back on our feet.