Perseverance / Commendable stubbornness.

My wife had been going through a particularly tough time at work and in her studies lately. When I was thinking about how the best way to approach the difficulties and curve-balls that life sometimes throws at us, I realised that the things that often frustrate me are those that I can’t do anything about. I suppose you could call it endurance or perserverance or whatever and some would say that just enduring is no way to live a life – or even part of it, that we should always take up the challenge and engage with whatever challenges face us, ra ra ra! I think that sometimes people underestimate just how much it can cost someone to even just hold on. It is too easy to sit above it all and criticise from the outside when we think we could have managed something so much better than perhaps somebody who fails to cope with a challenge in their life. As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow(1807 - 1882) said: “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.”