Perseverance

Wandering alone through the entrepreneurial desert

Success is glorified in our world in very specific ways; such as receiving a trophy, or getting carried off of a field as a champion.

The quest for success often begins with the yearning to feel special, to feel worthy, to feel whole and complete within oneself.

Throughout childhood, that is what the journey for success is all about.

Then your first business fails.

Everyone gives up on you.

You give up on yourself.

You’ve never felt more alone.

But you keep raking the mud.

You don’t know why.

You didn’t expect anything to grow.

You stopped caring if anything grew.

You didn’t care about success or failure anymore.

None of it matters.

The only thing that keeps you going is the belief that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world.

Rake.

Rake.

Rake.

Like a madman, rake the mud. Rake that mud convinced that flowers will grow, in the face of the ridicule of those who’ve long dismissed you as having gone insane.

Rake.

Rake.

Rake.

Forget about the result. Lose track of everything else. Be completely satisfied with the possibility that you will spend your whole life raking mud, without anything ever growing from it. Without any recognition. Without any money. Dying alone. Accept raking for raking’s sake.

Begin to feel proud of the raking. Begin to enjoy the mud. Begin to feel fulfilled simply knowing that you are willing to attempt something that others deem impossible.

And one day, there’s a sprout. A tiny green sprout. It’s nothing yet. It’s not a pumpkin, an apple tree, not even a grape vine. But it’s a sprout. No one is there to witness the sprout. And even if they were, it wouldn’t mean anything to them.

But this sprout means more to you than anyone could ever imagine. This sprout validates every day you spent through your entire 20s raking the mud, while everyone else was partying the nights away. A failure, a has been, an outcast from society. You’ve lost relationships over it. You’ve lost opportunities because of it. You questioned everything, including the possibility that your life had no meaning because of it. But you still persevered on.

And the sprout is alive.

Success becomes imminent.

But it no longer matters.

You were whole all along.

You just needed to fail so miserably and lose all hope of ever succeeding to accept yourself for who you were, without needing success to feel like your life was worthwhile.

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