Coming up for air ‘Community as the fuel for persistence’
This story is only partly about persistence, what I would really like to explore further is the human interactions that gives you the fuel to persist. It could be anything from a simple thank you, all the way to someone sharing how much you have positively changed his or her lives. The beauty of these moments is that no matter how tiny they are they can fuel your persistence for months & months to come. That is only if you take the time out to notice them, show gratitude & continue to cultivate such interactions.
To further illustrate this point, imagine the act of swimming were you have to periodically come up for air to prevent yourself from suffocating, now imagine this period of coming up for air ‘as your fuel to persist in the face of adversity’. To take this analogy a step further, the longer you practice swimming the less time you need to catch your breath. But it’s important to remember that no matter how strong your mental &physical persistence; being human you still have to come up for air, & this is where the story begins.
A few weeks ago I found myself at Liam Chai’s meditation retreat having a conversation with another friend called Timalka; who has been supporting Find Enlight & its ethos of following your curiosity for as long as I can remember. As if that was not enough fuel for me to keep going, she casually told me (out of the blue) that she attended one of Find Enlight’s selected events on DIY music making, which incidentally ignited her interest in experimental music &introduced her to a whole new community of musicians. This revelation left me absolutely stunned. Despite the fact that; Find Enlight’s main ethos is to spark a light bulb moment in people & fuel their curiosity, I was still totally unaware of the fact that a simple sharing of an event ignited a positive chain of events for someone else.
The reason I share this story is to show that no matter how confident you are in your idea & how persistent you are with your goals, it always comes down to the littlest gesture of gratitude from someone within your community, for you to appreciate & persist with your vision, its not down to shear hard work or brilliant foresight but time & time again it seems to come down to the community of people around you, that help you come up for air when it feels like you’ve been alone & working on your ideas for so long.
