Today, I'm Thankful for....

Perseverance.  Its that spirit of trying and trying, even when things get hard and quitting seems the only option.  Perseverance is that drive inside us that makes us keep on keepin' on in the face of insurmountable odds.  But it doesn't even have to be an enormous task.  Perseverance finds its way into every facet of life, big or small, both in persevering all the way through to the end of a marathon or persevering all the way through to the last bite of the Common's shrimp pasta.  Without perseverance, this nation would not have been founded.  Without perseverance, the ENIAC would still be considered a supercomputer.  Without perseverance, no one would get to the end of my blog posts.  Because of the perseverance of individuals and humanity united, our world has taken the milkshake of progress and sucked it down till it passed out from brainfreeze.  Perseverance isn't the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the coke-bottle-thickness glasses that help us see that light.  Perseverance fights the good fight, regardless of who's winning.

For instance, the sharpie that snuck into a pocket of the jeans that I just washed.  It was tossed and tumbled on regular spin cycle, but did it give up and leak black ink onto the entire load of wash?  No it did not!  The little guy fought through it and hung on till the end.  He didn't let the fact that he was only a fine-tip sharpie, not a thick-tipped marker of more usefulness, stop him.  He held himself together till he finally was pulled from the pit and relieved of the dizzying terror.  Only when his life was gone, his strength sapped, sitting in my hand away from my easily-stainable clothing which was amazingly spared from his wrath, did he give in, bleeding black ink all over my damp fingers.  I owe the existence and cleanliness of each and every piece of clothing in that washing machine to him, the little Sharpie, who managed to keep from staining all my clothes and ruining my day.  And for that, I pay homage to him.