I met Jim at the first wedding ceremony that I was the DJ. With his company Enduring Promises, he participated / acted as the minister for thousands of couples. He was smart, funny, a bit cutting and filled with love. We’d cross paths from time to time. Our interactions were always both warm and professional.
Fast forward five years and Laura was sick. We knew it was cancer. We knew it was stage four. Things seemed to indicate that Laura wouldn’t be around long. This made working weddings particularly problematic.
Have you been to a wedding lately?
There’s nothing that quite hammers home the sickness and health, till death do us part aspect of wedding vows like having two children under five and a spouse with a terminal illness.
Jim could tell something was up. Well. I guess my red tear streaked face gave away the game. That and the shaking that I was doing. I told him about my situation.
Ok. Would you mind if I prayed for you?
No… that’s ok…
Would you mind praying with us?
Jim explained that he lost his first wife to breast cancer while attempting to raise two young children. I froze. Any movement would have been my lunch leaving my guts.
Ok…
I’m not really the praying type, but Jim was infectious, so I went along with the message to the sky Santa. I couldn’t remember much of what he said but I remember this.
…he has made a promise, a promise to endure all hardships together. We pray dear lord for the strength to continue and the power to endure…
I have always hated endurance athletes.
I’ve always loathed the kind of corporate leadership bullshit that comes with ideas of ‘toughness’ and ‘endurance’. To me, this is just a way for work-a-holic martyrs to better manipulate their staff into more unpaid overtime.
I’ve never ever had any patience with the members of the management, accounting or human resources roles in the world. The corporate world is little more than a grotesque, government sanctioned game of dominance and control. Those in that ‘class’ are the police officers doing the bidding of the monks who dictate the new progressive morality from their ivory towers.
I find the sanctioned corporate / government / health / insurance / educational worlds not worth visiting, let alone enduring. Enduring humans beyond my tribe seems like too big of an ask by 'society'.
It’s funny though.
Writing a novel is an endurance sport - so is a Ph’d.
This foolsletter?
Though my writing will likely not endure the test of time, showing up daily is an act of endurance.
The etymology online dictionary describes endurance thusly:
late 15c., "continued existence in time;" see endure + -ance. Meaning "ability to bear suffering, etc." is from 1660s.
Let’s go further with the word ‘endure’.
late 14c., "to undergo or suffer" (especially without breaking); also "to continue in existence," from Old French endurer (12c.) "make hard, harden; bear, tolerate; keep up, maintain," from Latin indurare "make hard," in Late Latin "harden (the heart) against," from in- (from PIE root *en "in") + durare "to harden," from durus "hard," from PIE *dru-ro-, suffixed variant form of root *deru- "be firm, solid, steadfast."
Replaced the important Old English verb dreogan (past tense dreag, past participle drogen), which survives in dialectal dree. Related: Endured; endures.
Endure. Harden. Harden the heart.
Jim, the minister and head of Enduring Promises was essentially asking us to harden our hearts.
The timid, temperate, testicles of the world think that toughing up or gritting your teeth and bearing through the pain of existence is an example of so called ‘toxic masculinity’. I’ve met and worked with psychologists who are terrified to trigger people and in fact advise that people to nurture their tender hearts.
They enable and empower the confused to gain status through participation in the victim olympics. Instead of helping people endure, they cultivate dependence. Through an ethos of ‘do no harm’ they actively hurt people by encouraging passive surrender.
If you’ve been depressed and are frozen it might not be time to soften.
It might be time to light the fires of rage, heat the steel of your existence then temper it with ice cold water.
Get hard.
Make hard promises.
Choose to do difficult things.
Cry if you must.
And then?
Get to work.
Play the music.
Marry the couple.
Even if your spouse is dying, the show must go on.
**** NOTE ****
Yesterday I’d promised something about the end of our ride and the trestle bridge. That will come out tomorrow. I need to edit the video before that happens.
Burn the field. Endure. Half of life is loss.