Meet Persey and Vera

Perseverance

Perseverance is the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition.

That’s what Dave was talking about when he told the kid living at our house, “You obviously never met Persey and Vera.”

The kid looked at him, puzzled.  “No, I never did. Who is Persey and Vera?” he asked.

Dave chuckled. “My Pop introduced me to Persey and Vera,” he explained. “Anytime we felt like giving up or wanted to give up, he’d remind us of Persey and Vera.”

“Huh?” the 6-foot, size 12 shoe-wearer asked.

“Persey,” Dave explained,  “is part of not giving up. You keep trying. When it’s hard, you don’t stop or quit.  Do you know what you do? You keep trying. You Persey.”

It was obvious this kid thought Dave was crazy. So Dave continued, “Then there is Vera.”

“Sounds like an old woman to me,” the teenager said.

“Not an old woman,” Dave explained. “Vera is also a part of Persey. It is tenacity and persistence. Anytime we thought something was too hard to figure out or too hard to do, Pop told us to remember Persey and Vera.”

By now the kid knew there was no point in arguing with Dave on what he thought was too hard to do. He just shook his head.

“Perseverance is what you do when you think you can’t. When you don’t want to because it’s too hard or you don’t know how to do it, you remember Persey and Vera. You keep on until you figure it out. You don’t give up because Persey and Vera will help you get it done.”

Persey and Vera = great friends

Too often, we focus on the problem and not on finding a solution. We become paralyzed by our fears or inabilities. We should, instead, reach down inside us and pull out Persey and Vera. The reward of reaching down inside and coming up with a solution is fulfilling. The end result of perseverance is rewarding for those who do not give up or give in.

This is following the old adage, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” It’s a sense of not giving up when a problem is hard. Rather, we buckle down and apply all we have in an effort to solve the problem. More times than not, we find we can accomplish something we never thought we could.

Granted, there are times when all we can do is not enough. Sometimes we simply cannot complete an assignment. Other times we do not have the means to find answers to a problem. Yet, even in those times, when we claim Persey and Vera and do our best, we can know that we’ve given our best, and that is enough.