Perseverance: Keep Going Until You Get It

By Toni Mikec on January 16, 2013

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”  Thomas A. Edison

            The book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts a scene where the protagonist, Nick, sees his neighbor Jay Gatsby walking to the end of his dock and reaching out over the lake towards a green light, which sits on another dock which belongs to his great love Daisy Buchannan. In a way, every student at this university is Jay Gatsby as we all want to achieve our own dreams and we have to get our diploma at UC Davis in order to continue down the path to do so. However, the task will be hard and there will be many obstacles in our way. We, however, cannot let those obstacles get in our way of achieving our dreams. Sometimes it is the person who never gives up even in the face of adversity that goes on to achieve great things while those who crumble at the first sign of trouble achieve little. Unfortunately, sometimes it is he/she that is closest to the ultimate victory who suffers the bitterest failure.

Many years ago, my friend was a soccer player for one of the local leagues in my area. He was what many would call a “satisfactory” player, that is, he was not stellar, but he was not terrible either and tended to get lost in the team. He would always try to help everyone he could with what knowledge that he possessed but was not recognized for it and frequently complained to me that he hated it on the team and wanted to quit. However, I advised him to stay with the team and push through it and one day his talent would be recognized. Unfortunately, he did not listen and quit the team without knowing that he had been recommended for an excellence in teamwork award. Had he not quit, the knowledge that he won that award would have helped him keep playing the game and by doing so, he could have made a positive impact on himself, his team, and others. Instead, by quitting just before he could have achieved something great, but in quitting just before he achieved the recognition that he craved, achieved nothing.

However, for everyone who fails before achieving something great, there are also those who face monumental obstacles but do not falter or give up and go on to change the world. One often forgotten individual who achieved this was the Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla who is credited with inventing alternating current (AC). In order to gain the respect of the scientific community, a scientist has to show that his theory works; however, Nikola was unable to get the money needed to build a working alternating current motor as the idea of alternating current had been proposed before but various attempts to prove its existence had been met with failure and the scientific community had given up with developing alternating current and decided to stay with the less dependable and sometimes dangerous direct current (DC). After much toil and trouble, Nikola finally found a sponsor and developed his motor and as a result, today we use alternating current. As a result of not giving up on his dream, Nikola made a big impact on the world while the scientists who attempted to discover it but gave up before doing so disappeared into the annals of history. Another person who overcame a great obstacle with the aid of a friend was immortalized in the film The King’s Speech, in which King George VI, played by Colin Firth, suffers a speech impediment and has to take the throne as his father has died and his older brother has run off with a twice divorced American woman. After seeing many therapists to no avail, he comes to Lionel Logue who agrees to help him and despite being unprepared to take the throne as his brother, not him, was groomed for it, Logue is able to help overcome the king’s speech impediment and he goes on to be a great monarch during a time of trial known as the Second World War.

During the final scene of TKS, Firth’s character gives a speech to the British people saying that they are again at war with Germany. Firth proclaims, “The task will be hard… but if we keep resolutely to it then… we shall prevail.”  In the same sense, we must work to overcome our obstacles whether it is from ourselves or other people who wish to do us harm. Though, as Firth says, “the task will be hard,” there is often great profit in not giving up as Nikola Tesla learned and as my friend unfortunately failed to learn. Through perseverance and the inner dogged determination that we all possess, I do believe that we will all succeed and somehow, someway touch the light on the other side of the lake.

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