Perseverance by the Balloonatic

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Perseverance by the Balloonatic

There is a saying that God does not give us more to bear than we can handle. I think, no matter your religious beliefs or lack of belief we all come to a point where we just cry out “Enough!” I have reached that point many times in my life. One problem arises after another until I’m overwhelmed and feel ready to break or run away or just crawl back into bed and put the blankets over my head and hide.

In the world we live in, this can happen in many different ways. It happens as we read the news and are bombarded by all of the horror stories – real events happening which we could never have imagined would happen – pastors being arrested in Canada for holding worship services, doctors being fired for following actual science instead of following the popular trends, getting told someone is a man or a woman because that’s how they currently feel, children getting sterilized or babies murdered and being told it’s healthcare. The list goes on and on to the point that we sometimes want to be like the three monkeys: hands over our eyes, our ears and our mouth, no longer wanting to hear the truth, see what is happening or say what we believe because if we do we can no longer trust that people will treat us the same.

When it feels as if the world is falling apart around us, it is hard to find the strength to go on. And those are the times when we can reach deep within and find the will to not only carry on, but to overcome. To persevere. Even if we cannot accomplish wonders, we can finish the jobs set before us and that is often all that is needed. If we are very lucky, we can not only finish, we can excel. But even if we fail, just making the attempt is enough. It’s a start, and it doesn’t mean the end.

As a young adult out on my own for the first time, I struggled with depression. I was lost and felt like a failure and that there wasn’t much point in carrying on. I didn’t have much of a social life. I went to school part time, I worked full time, and in my spare time I read a lot of books. I was at one of my lowest points when I read Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, and in that book she wrote “I’ve always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable than misfortune.” For me, life was a test. And I was able to realize that life is also a gift. And I learned to persevere.

Perseverance doesn’t mean that life somehow becomes easier or smoother. Sometimes it means that the path becomes even rockier and harder to follow. There are scrapes and bumps along the way. Times when you need to stop and catch your breath. As an example, in mid-August we had more rain than normal for Ohio, which I’ve always found to have more than enough rain in a normal year. And what I thought was a simple toilet paper clog on a late Saturday afternoon turned into 7-8 inches of sewer backing up in the middle of my laundry room and several inches of water in almost all of the rest of the basement. As bad as it was, I knew that it could have been much worse. Yes, things were destroyed, some irreplaceable. But all of my appliances and furnaces made it through. The water didn’t reach the bottom shelf on my bookcase. Most of my spare pantry was spared with the exception of one case of water and one big bag of rice. And my insurance covers sewer backups. So I put my head down and started to do what needed to be done, to not just restore the damage but to make improvements that would limit it in the future and fix other water issues that happened in the past.

And then, last week, my son disturbed my bath by letting me know that there was an issue in the kitchen. The floor was covered in water which was pouring from the ceiling. He manned the mop while I helped clean it up the best that we could. We ended up having to take down the upper cabinets in part of the kitchen and ripping out the ceiling, then testing to see – was it from the tub? From the joins between my son’s bathroom pvc drains and the cast iron leading down to the basement? We finally decided that it must be coming from the shower in the master bath – the second time in less than a year.  And again, we could have let this bring us down, but it could have been so much worse. A leaky shower is so much better than a leaky toilet!! So again, I get the opportunity to teach my son to persevere. As the great Monty Python said, “Always look on the bright side of life.”

While it sometimes feels that it’s not only my house, but the whole world which is falling down around us, I think that if we hold to the truth and persevere we will make it through. We will find that we are not alone and that we can support one another and keep going. Life is not a race. It is a marathon. And it’s not about coming first, it’s about completing the course, even if someone is having to carry you across the finish line. Hang tight. Hold on. Keep calm and carry on.

61 thoughts on “Perseverance by the Balloonatic”

  1. The other things that prompted this post was a weekend trip to visit cousins. My one cousin’s son was in a Wreckfest race. I’m not sure how many times he has competed, but this was the first time he actually finished all 100 laps. And then we had a family reunion with cousins on Sunday. The last time I saw most of them was 2018/2019 when all they could talk about was Orange Man Bad. But now it was the complete opposite.

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      1. They all live in Canada. But I think when we persevere with speaking the truth it makes a difference. The freedom convoy made a huge difference.

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  3. Oh yes, all this. Two years ago our truck engine blew up on a road near Sterling, Nebraska. We were on our way to a pheasant hunting trip in South Dakota, with two adult sons and our eager German Shorthair Pointer. Our breakdown point was in a hollow on a deserted road, with no cell service.

    We split up, walked in different directions in pairs, got cell service, and put in a call for roadside assistance. My sons didn’t get angry. They wanted to make sure I was okay more than anything else. The local rancher saw us and drove down his lane to ask if we needed help. He agreed to let us run our dog on his land, so my husband took our GSP out to bound joyously through the fields. Seven hours later, the wrecker arrived. We didn’t make the hunting trip. But we persevered. And that’s a memory I will cherish.

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    1. We had a trip, not a hunting trip, like that. Left inlaws from La Pine, Oregon, heading to Arches to start a Utah National Park trip, Saturday the day after Christmas. Got as far as just north of Salt Lake when we pulled into a rest area to use facilities and switch drivers (before we started RVing). The ’82 Chevy backfired, loudly. Put it in reverse to leave, and “Kerclunk” (totally a word). Um. Put back in park, switch places, hubby checks everything out, running through gears (manual shift, old stick on the floor style). Seems fine. Head on down road, try to call mechanic BIL, no answer (before cell phones, at least handheld size). Head on down to cutoff to Arches. When out of the medium comes this huge bird (knowing our luck an eagle, but more likely large pheasant, which are known to do this), sure enough we hit it in flight (or it hits us, 100% unclear, bird thrown over hood of pickup and long gone by time we can stop). Bangs up driver side headlight, breaks grill. Pull over, out come the zip ties. On down the road we go. Hit the cutoff. Heading east on two lane highway. All I can see is white eyes, a lot of them on either side of the very dark foggy road, fog layer is right at windshield height. Turned around, spent the night in the parking lot of a large gas/7-11 setup just east of the highway exit. We were not adding “hit deer or two” to the list. Get into Arches Sunday AM, find pay phone and call BIL at a decent hour. Conversation went like this “Cracked gears in transmission. Take immediately to mechanic first thing in the morning. Lucky the transmission didn’t seize while driving.” Sure enough when the mechanic pulled the transmission the gears dissolved. Could hear them hitting the pan. Three days later, a rebuilt transmission shipped in from Salt Lake, and installed and we were back on the road $2800 poorer (please note, this was in ’84). Wish it ended there. But no. Transmission had a leak, so we were constantly checking levels and making sure we could continue on. Got home. Took it to where the warranty on the rebuilt transmission would be honored (not hard), then paid whatever extra to get it upgraded to the beefy version. No more trouble with that truck, which we drove for $140k miles before selling it after owning it for 12 years. The only luck, not so much luck, as that is how it is, even now, is that Moab Utah is (or was) the largest 4×4 dealerships and mechanics in the west, because of Canyonlands National Park, and other 4×4 venues.

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    2. I like that, too. I think some of it also comes down to what Larry Correia describes as flexible minds in the MHI Universe.

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      1. Everyone wants to root for the protagonist of the story. They especially want to see them conquer insurmountable odds. So be the protagonist of your own story and root for yourself to win the day, every day. No matter what The Author throws at you.

        You can do it! We are all rooting for you. Except the bad guys but you can defeat THEM. No one wants THEM to win.

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                4. That’s what zombies are for. Oh, wait, they’re after brainzzzz – they may not see Hillary as suitable fare.

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  5. There is a big difference between simple perseverance, and persevering against liberal stupidity. No one ever succeeded without at first failing several times. That is not counting democrats who fail upwards, which probably explains why they are so shocked their grand plans never work. As americans we have great patience, perseverance is a way of life for us. At present, our ability to turn the other cheek and persevere is fast coming to an end.

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  6. It’s been a really bad week for me, no lie or exaggeration but the “Hey you’re over fifty, we’ve a special medical exam for you!” was the high point

    The people around me have done their blessed best to support me, including those two orders removed from me directly. Getting calls from complete strangers “What can I do to help?”

    Keep on keeping on.

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        1. I think it was the insurance that Dan & Sarah had on their car that will cover the repairs.

          If the idiot is “undocumented”, I really doubt that he has insurance on his car.

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          2. Wags hands. That is why Oregon has two type of drivers licenses. One that can be used to get through TSA (secure, verify citizen), and lot more expensive. The second that is allows undocumented and homeless to have drivers license and get car insurance, which is the “old” version. Safer that way, don’t ya know. (Not that we’re upgrading. We don’t fly. If we ever do, passports work too.

            FWIW Oregon DMV already has my certified marriage license showing my married name, and when it was changed; boy was that hoop to jump through. (We were married in Dechutes county at the inlaws home on the Little Dechutes, between Sunriver and La Pine. But the license was taken out in Benton county. Needed the one filed in Benton County where it was taken out.)

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  7. Recovering from unexpected surgery. Pain is a life detector.

    (Kzin grin)
    Ow…
    (Bigger Kzin grin)

    Again, thanks Mom, for reading me that book.

    “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can….I -know- I can! I -know- I can! ….”

    That crap got me through more adversity and outright fornicated fido moments than almost anything else.

    Never quit.

    Victory!

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  8. Did a bunch of digging in the Enneatype personality typing a while back. One of its themes end up being that negative emotions drive default behavior, and that default setting was what they called the personality type.

    The funny thing was, at their best, each personality type ended up having to face the thing they hated/feared/were ashamed of, and became something different, not what they, by default sought out.

    So a type 9 “peacemaker” hates/is made miserable by conflict and discord. Their default behavior is to avoid it, and go along to get along. But that doesn’t get you anywhere. The peak type 9, instead of avoiding conflict, instead seeks it and resolves it. And in the process they end up enabling incredible things, because they can actually get the cats pointed in the same direction.

    It struck me as interesting how in that system, all of the types usually needed something other than what they wanted.

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    2. That does sound interesting. I have found that staying positive and optimistic makes a big difference in handling tough situations. I can’t do it all the time. There are times when I break down and have to pick myself up again. But it’s better than losing my temper and getting angry over things beyond my control. And a lot easier than when you are trying to stay positive when the person next to you is screaming.

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    4. There is a reason that Colt’s Single Action Army revolver is called “Peacemaker”.

      And special bonus points to the originator of “They have made a Desert, and called it ‘peace’.”

      Peace, out.

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  9. This is hilarious, and a good response to some of the regional nonsense that China’s been pulling over the last decade or two.

    An staff officer in the Indian Army (by the name of Manoj Naravane) posted a map of “China as it really is” in his Twi… I mean X feed.

    The map came from an English-language Indian periodical.

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    1. “China” looks suspiciously like, oh, Tang Dynasty minus the western claim. Or Qin Dynasty (all one emperor of it) with more in the south. Evil historian kitty grin

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      1. Qin had three emperors, actually, though the final one basically took the throne to surrender the capitol (and I believe was subsequently executed by the Chu forces). The second was a puppet until his puppet master got tired of him and had him killed.

        As for the map – hardly a surprise that it would resemble the Tang. The very next major dynasty after the Tang, the Yuan Dynasty, was the first foreign dynasty, which – ironically enough -came from one of those “occupied” areas. :P

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    1. Right, then. I’m a fourth degree black belt because I persevered (or was too dang stubborn to give it up). Indeed, I have stubborned my way through frequent migraines and a constellation of illnesses to get in the physical shape I’m in today – from being unable to do one pushup to some days doing 120 (not all at once . . . yet). It took me 12 years, but now people look at me and think, “She’s strong!”
      This relates also to other kinds of problems, but that’s the one that came to mind.

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  11. Fortitude (of which perseverance is a part) is a classical virtue for a reason. It’s important to a virtuous life but there are times I wish I didn’t need it so much.

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  12. I’ve found mostly ignoring non-local news helps. Pirates in Oakland Bay, while somewhat amusing, has absolutely no bearing on my life. Let alone the latest earthquake in Africa, tsunami in Indonesia, or covid camp in Australia.

    One generally has to see that stuff to find the things that do matter, but don’t let the irrelevancies overwhelm you.

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    1. Ignoring the concentration camps because they haven’t come for you yet seems…short-sighted. Consider how your local politicians and bureaucrats might be affected by the excesses they observe in other countries, especially if they are allowed to succeed.

      I just know they’re watching the shitshow up in Kanuckistan and dreaming about what they can get away with.

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