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Perseverance

Last winter, I got ambitious and decided to knit myself a sweater. I usually avoid time-consuming projects as I don’t trust myself to finish them before my creative spark moves on to greener pastures.

So, I chose a beautiful yarn in three bright colors and an elegant knitting pattern and got on with it. By mid-spring, however, I had barely managed to get through the neck and the tip of the shoulders. The pattern, I realized belatedly, involved many different increases, decreases, and switchbacks. So, last month, in the middle of another winter, I contemplated what to do with that barely-started sweater project. The temptation was to pull the yarn, undo whatever I had, and go back to my knitting socks and scarves.

But, wouldn’t you know it – it turned out that I had stopped just before the row where the pattern was about to change. The very next row, the instructions settled into a simple rhythm of alternating rows of knit and purl. And to think that I had been a whisker away from giving up and unraveling the whole thing!

Keeping the Faith

I was reminded of the Perseverance card story from the Chakra Wisdom Oracle Cards by Tori Hartman. In it, a woman gives up on her dreams after many years of hard work and dedication. A goddess tries to tell her that a breakthrough was very near, but she wouldn’t listen. The Perseverance card gently urges us to continue even when our faith waivers.

My knitting story is a far cry from a life-long dedication to a goal, yet it brought home a poignant question. It made me wonder, how many times I might have given up on something when success was just around the corner. So, next time we are on the verge of giving up on a goal, let us pause for a moment and contemplate. Could it be that things are just about to change? Why not have faith that everything will work out and persevere just a tiny bit further?


Postscript

The idea of Perseverance must be in the air in our Northern Virginia suburban neighborhood. As I was finalizing this post, I found out that NASA’s Next Mars Rover’s name was going to be Perseverance. They chose the name through an essay contest. The person who won turns out to be a 7-grader from my son’s school. 🙂