“You can do anything for a semester!”
“It is just for the summer.”
“One more year to go until I graduate.”
“When my kids start driving, it will be so much easier.”
“I cannot wait for this week to be over.”
“When I retire, I will have time for that.”
“If we can make it through December, everything is going to be alright I know.” (Shout out to Merle Haggard.)
It seems we spend a lot of time “getting through” what we deem to be valleys in life until we really do reach a valley. Then we look back on those past days with “graduation goggles.” We romanticize the past and don’t see it for what it was.
This was never clearer to me when I overheard friends talking recently. One was at her wits’ end because her children were not able to be as active as they were pre-pandemic. The other person told her that “our grandparents have seen far worse for much longer.” To which she replied skeptically, “Really, did they?”
Yes. They did. And each time during this past year when we have personally experienced or watched so many dear friends and colleagues go through devastation, whether it be through loss of family or loss of employment or a business, the struggles of our elders and those before us have served as a reminder and inspiration that we can get through anything.
Each of us has stories in our heritage or in our own lives where we or family members have conquered adversity that most can only imagine. Being the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family, I had the benefit of having younger grandparents (the youngest was 40 when I was born). I had years to hear my grandfather’s stories of the Great Depression, of near starvation, of the Dust Bowl and migration from the Ozarks back to Owensboro to live with family here and then to be tenant farmers. And then onto World War II. As a small business owner who was eventually shut down because of big grocery chains, he transferred that personal survival instinct into his life’s work.
We all know these stories of our families. Or of our own lives. We are made of tough stuff.
Reflecting on these stories, I realize now I never heard complaining. I never heard self-pity. There was pride. Pride that the adversity was overcome, if not through guts and hard work through time, by sheer tenacity to get through the worst of times. And to somehow celebrate the joy that exists in each day regardless of circumstances.
Decades later, I realize why my grandfather was insistent on telling us his stories. It wasn’t for entertainment or for us to hear how resilient or tough he was. It was to let us know what we are made of. And that no matter how tough it gets, we need to keep going.
Tomorrow, our nation celebrates the life of Martin Luther King Jr., a fellow member of my grandparents’ generation, who said, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you have to do you have to keep moving forward.”