Through the alchemy of forests and friendships, my love of rock climbing has recently been rekindled. I am a novice climber, delighting in and curious about all that this movement practice holds. In the short time that I have returned to climbing, I have found myself curious about the interplay it offers between patience, perseverance, and practice.
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Patience. From the Latin patientia, meaning “the quality of suffering,” which is present participle of pati, meaning “to endure, undergo, experience.”1
Perseverance. From the Latin perseverantia, meaning “steadfastness, constancy” or the “quality of continuing or enduring.”
Whereas patience conveys a particular orientation to the experience of navigating challenging and painful circumstances, perseverance evokes a commitment to endure through the circumstances, to stick with it. This necessitates practice – the repetition of an action; trying and trying again and again and again.
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When I climb, my current approach is primarily to repeatedly work routes that are (for me) accessible with a bit of challenge. Every once in a while, however, I mix in attempts of routes of a higher difficulty. These attempts often go like this:
Approach the wall.
Try out a starting position.
Fall.
Try a new starting position.
Get on the wall.
Fall.
Walk away.
Approach the wall.
Get into the starting position.
Reach for the next hold.
Fall.
Rest.
Approach the wall.
Get into the starting position.
Reach for the next hold.
Grip.
Shift body.
Step up.
Fall.
Rest.
The pattern is consistent. Try. Fall. Try again. Fall again. Over and over. But each fall is not a failure. If I am attentive enough, each time I fall, I notice what didn’t work and what I need to change: how to shift my body position, how to move my leg, how to bend my elbow, how to place my foot. Each time I fall, I have the opportunity to fail better. Eventually, with enough perseverance, I might fail my way to the top, completing the route. This might happen in one climbing session, or over the course of days or weeks.
It is not purely a matter of persistence, however. If, in my repeated attempts to climb a route, I become frustrated or overly fearful – tense in body and mind – I fall much sooner, unable to reach the height or a hold I previously attained. And so, I am learning to be patient – not to force, but rather to take my time and approach each new attempt with curiosity and ease. When I approach the wall, I exhale and relax my arms. As I reach for the first hold and step my feet up, I whisper to myself “easy, easy.” When I intentionally choose and cultivate fluidity and ease in my movement, even as my muscles and strength are strained, I climb much better and move nearer toward my goal.
If I successfully complete a route, I try again. Movement coach and my dear friend Julie Angel shared with me an approach to learning a new movement skill that says: Once is never. Twice is maybe. Three times you have it. I’ve integrated this into my climbing practice, reclimbing each route. Every time I do, I find new ways of moving, positioning, and placing my body that are more fluid, steady, and assured. Cultivating these patterns of movement and mind, I find myself stronger, more courageous, and more creative in my attempts at new routes, new challenges.
Climbing, I am finding, offers an invitation to practice patient perseverance, to repeatedly embody and enact a quality of presence and engagement with challenging and difficult circumstances. In another framing, it is an invitation to practice a quality of presence and engagement we carry in our navigation, and eventual transformation, of conflict.
John Paul Lederach suggests that the transformative work of peacebuilding lies in the fostering of a certain quality of relationship, particularly between people who are differently situated or differently minded in society.2 At the core of this is the quality of presence we carry in the conflicts we encounter, a compassionate presence that honors the dignity and humanity of those around us, especially with those deemed as “other.”3 The cultivation of such a quality of presence requires patience, perseverance, and practice.
We must be patient for we are all human. We all carry wounds and we have all caused harm. In the process of reconciliation and conflict transformation, we must be patient with ourselves and others as we make mistakes and stumble along the long and arduous journey of relational repair.4
We must persevere for the conflicts we face within ourselves, in our relationships, and in our world are vast and complex. They will not be solved with quick-fixes, instead asking of us commitment to the process, especially in moments where the challenges we face seem insurmountable, when our endurance and perhaps even our hope is tested.
We must practice for so long as we live, we encounter conflict. With each such encounter we are given an opportunity to embody ways of moving and being in relationship that center dignity and care.
Whether at the crux of a climbing route or the impasse of a conflict, cultivating patient perseverance can help us to transcend the limitations we may initially perceive. We persist in the challenging moments, trusting that there is a way through. We will fail often, possibly many more times than we succeed. But perhaps, with enough intention and presence, each time we can fail better, moving us closer in the direction of generative change.
1 “Patience,” Etymology, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=patience.
2 “John Paul Lederach – The Art of Peace,” The On Being Project, November 8, 2021, https://onbeing.org/programs/john-paul-lederach-the-art-of-peace/.
3 Lederach, John Paul. “Compassionate Presence: Faith-Based Peacebuilding in the Face of Violence.” Joan B. Kroc Distinguished Lecture Series. Lecture, February 16, 2012. https://digital.sandiego.edu/lecture_series/3/.
4 It is notable here that the word patience shares a root with compassion, which comes from the Latin compati, com meaning “with, together” and pati, translated as “to suffer.” In other words, compassion is the quality of how are together with or alongside suffering.
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