Strive

Photo by @floretflower

I start following her when a gorgeous photo of an old pickup makes its way into my feed; the truck bed filled to the brim with a carefully curated rainbow of dazzling dahlias.  Instagram is my social media of choice; it is all about the pictures.  I follow artists, bakers, foodies, travelers, yogis, writers and photographers, and I’m particularly drawn to women who chronicle the stories of their entrepreneurial highs and lows. I can’t get enough of the intimate details they share about what it is to be a small business owner.

 

I watch her remodel, turning what looks to be an old greenhouse into a workshop where her wares are stored, seed packets pulled and packaged for shipping. I live through the crush of her crashing servers, hear the thunder as she’s nearly trampled in a stampede of on-line orders she can’t fulfill when technology fails her. I feel her humility and despair as she shares her dismay at both her overwhelming success and her inability to keep up with it.

 

Today I question my own success. I drag myself home after dark from my latest assignment, mulling over problems this intense, non-stop day of onion peeling reveals, only to hole up in my office for another hour replying to all the e-mails stuffed in my in-box.  My commute is nearly 4 hours round trip, trapping me in my car with that voice in my head primed to beat me up with a merciless critique of my day.  The one who likes to scream loudly that I’m not enough.

 

I find inspiration in the creativity of my fellow humans on Instagram.  And she doesn’t let me down when I scroll through my feed tonight. She tells the story of her most recent failure and why she plans to jump right back into the fray, quoting “The Man in the Arena”, delivered by Theodore Roosevelt on April 23, 1910 at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. In the few moments it takes me to reacquaint myself with his words, I’m reminded the voice in my head has no business bringing me down, for it can never stand on its own in any arena.  There is no success without failure. I’m out here trying and I’m certain I will pick myself up tomorrow and do it again.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”