Pushing the limits

If you got a ‘promise’ cling to it for it is that roadmap that gives you faith to work out your way to the end,” a great quote from my friend Moses Tusingwire, that got me thinking. Just what is this “promise”? Then it struck me that the “promise” may not necessarily be about what you’ve been promised but what you expect to reap from “working out your way”. We’re talking about endurance here.

Hard work with endurance mightily pays

This life being a wrestling match, there’s no way you can achieve unless you’re willing and ready to endure while pushing the limits. That said, endurance carries a price tag too. It’s the stuff of those who accept themselves and quit chasing after validation from others. Only those who endure witness the dawn that precedes the dark night. The young woman that couldn’t endure the agony of pushing ended up killing her baby. The other gnashes her teeth and wails through the roof as she pushes with all her might. And when it’s all over and the baby is in her arms, all the labour pangs are forgotten as the smile on her beautiful face testifies.

Evidently, good things come through enduring through the wrestle and hassle. The ground is cursed and a man must earn his living by the sweat of his brow. But the beauty about it is that God loves a drenched face. Sweat represents toil and persistence. And when you’re verging on surrender, when you feel nothing will come of all that tussling, He moves in and wipes that sweet sweat away. You start enjoying.

Consider the price Kiprotich had to pay as he left his beautiful wife and two lovely children and went to Kenya to sweat it out in the cold morning. He woke up earlier and toiled, and perhaps no one gave him drinking water. Like him our pot-bellIed government may see you and only shake its head at the poor man jogging his poverty away.

But you remember the famous Cus D’Amato tip that to allow yourself to be distracted is to allow yourself to fail. So you ignore the naysayer and toil on. Suddenly, something spectacular happens. Cameras swing on the golden boy. You’ve arrived! All the sweat; the endurance has finally paid off! Those that thought nothing was assured now turn around shamelessly and become your praise-singers, asking to kiss your gold medal.

The reason you and I must seize and cling to the old ‘promise’ – hardwork pays. Hardwork that goes with endurance, mightily does.