Thursday, September 19, 2013

7 ate 9

My friend recently sent me a link to a post about happiness. It included this graphic:


It's a really nice sentiment. Just keep getting back up, and eventually you'll stay up. Right? I mean, that's what they tell us. Try, try, try again. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up. 

That's 3 tries. 
5 "ever"s. 
8 stand-ups. 

But how many times is going to be your magic number? Maybe it's just 1. Or 25. Or 168. You don't know, do you? Is there a point at which you just call it off and say, "You know what? I've learned my lesson. This isn't working"?? Where is the line between insanity (i.e. doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results) and tenacity? When does a valliant effort just turn into stubborn foolishness? 

I don't know. But I'll let you know if I ever find out. 

3 comments:

Ali K. said...

Formula 409 is thus called because it took them 409 tries to find the perfect...formula.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Get up a bajillion times, but do something different on each new try.

Annie Crow said...

Oh, she's wise. We should listen to her, the young squirt.

... said...

Haha. The youngin. 409 huh? That's a lot of tries. I did think of the "add something different" aspect. It's a good one. I think it's why we don't run the same 3 mile loop over and over again- it's why we add distance or speed.

That's the Progress part!!