Perseverance Essay

1565 Words4 Pages

1 May 2014
Perseverance: A Virtue and Vice
From the very beginning of life children are taught to not give up despite their past failures. One example of this would be when they are first trying to walk or ride a bike. In this case perseverance would be deemed as a good quality to have. In another instance someone is arrested and convicted for robbery. Once released, they attempt to commit the same crime again. This example would be an individual persevering but for a malicious and self-seeking motive. Perseverance is the continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition. (Merriam Webster). While it is often seen only in a positive light, like most things, when used wrongly it has far from a positive impact. Perseverance, while socially accepted as a societal virtue, can also be a vice to those who use it to pursue malevolent or selfish causes.
The first character exemplifies the definition of perseverance. Odysseus from The Odyssey is an example of an individual that is persevering for a respectable and virtuous reason. He is determined to return home to his wife despite the many obstacles he has faced along the journey. Odysseus’s mindset is that he will endure all the trials that are ahead of him to return home. Odysseus states:
[…] what I want and all my days I pine for is to go back to my house and see my day of homecoming. And if some god batters me far out on the wine-blue water, I will endure it, keeping a stubborn spirit inside me, for already I have suffered much and done much hard work on the waves and in the fighting. So let this adventure follow. (5.219-224)
This establishes the way in which Odysseus dealt with trails throughout the Odyssey. There are numerous instances when th...

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One aspect of my life that I have been persevering from for years is the loss of my dad. It is never something you truly get past, but you can choose to let it define you, destroy you, or shape you. It took me many tries to find the right way in which to move past that struggle but I think the end product embodied perseverance. Despite searching for answers and solutions in the wrong places I kept trying. I was determined to not let this event define or destroy my life. The failures that I suffered when searching for those answers made when I finally came to grips with it that much more rewarding because I knew that I battled through the extremely difficult times and came out a better person because of it. Perseverance is not the easy thing do, it is not the most common thing to do, but it is by far the most rewarding thing to do when all is said and done.

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