Pondering Pint-sized Perseverance

Yesterday, just because the sun was out and the temperature was above five degrees (celsius,) I sat in a small local park and let spring soak into my bones. There was a little girl- about two to three years old- steady on her feet but clearly relatively new to all that could be accomplished once an upright posture is achieved. Dressed in a bright yellow jacket, blue jeans, and pink runners she was intent on her own activity, her head of blonde curls bent in concentration. Her mother watched from a park bench nearby.

Now, set into a very gentle slope that runs from the paved walking path onto the small playing field are two shallow concrete steps. The slope is so slight and the steps are so minimal you have to wonder why they were put there at all. Most folks just step right over them or go around them.

But to this small girl these two steps were an alluring challenge. Over and over she would go to the top step and prepare to jump to the ground, bending her knees, swinging her arms, her small body winding up for the leap to the soft grass below the two steps. She was as focused as any sky-diver. But despite her clear intention, each time, at the last moment, she extended one small foot and stepped down onto the lower step before making the clearly desired and more adventurous two-legged leap onto the grass.

And then she’d go back up the small slope, put herself on the top step and start the process all over again. I could feel my own body tense with anticipation each time she got ready to make the jump from the top step, could see the fear and determination in her small shoulders.

Suddenly, one of the boys who’d been running around the park noticed the aspiring jumper. He was bigger and older than she was- probably four or five years old. He raced over, paused briefly on the top step and leapt into the air with a shout of triumph, landing in a low crouch on the grass below.

The little girl watched him. Her forehead wrinkled into a frown, her eyes were serious, her mouth set in a grim line. I wondered if she would take the ease with which he had done what she’d been trying to do for the last half hour as encouragement or an indication of some kind of personal failure, a reason to give up.

The boy ran off to rejoin his friends, and the girl just stood on the grass looking at the steps for a few moments. And then she went up the slope and started all over again. When I left fifteen minutes later, she was still at it, still trying to summon the courage to jump from the top step, each time pausing just before the leap to take one step down. Perhaps she had taken the boy's agility as encouragement- clearly this was a feat a small human being could accomplish.

Or maybe she knew intuitively that each person’s “edge” where they find a challenge and must stretch to do what they think they cannot, is different. Perhaps she could feel that each time she tried her fear was loosening its grip a little more. Certainly she showed no signs of giving up.

As I headed back to my apartment to try and make some sense out of the note-covered walls (an attempt to organize material in the book I am writing) I thought about how human it is to keep trying, to find a way to do what feels important to us even if it doesn't come easily (and seems to come easily to another) or doesn’t hold particular value for anyone else. It made me smile to think of that small determined child in us all, willing to keep trying, frightened but eager to jump just for the thrill of knowing- hoping- that we can.

Oriah (c) 2013