Perseverance

In our new atmosphere of social distancing, I’m spending a lot of my time apart from client calls, email, and posting having quality time with my grandson. Yesterday, he set aside his other favorite toys to concentrate on blocks.

At first there was much frustration as he tried to build towers and balance numbers on them because he had to learn what made a flimsy versus stable base and how to use triangular or rounded pieces in a stack. He got frustrated when the structures would fall and cried out in irritation. I suggested to him that he try balancing them in a different way, but didn’t interfere or show him any examples (as tempting as that was) because he was clearly learning a lot from his own experiences.

Within an hour he had built some decent standing towers and managed to crown them all with numbers 1 through 9. Then he clapped for himself. I was lucky enough to capture this process in these photos.

Watching Gabriel reminded me of how ingenious we humans are; how we try and fail again and again and find such satisfaction in ultimate success. And how we get a lot out of sharing the frustrations and the celebrations with our loved ones.

We are presently in very challenging and frustrating times. We aren’t experiencing much strong leadership and who knows what the government can and will actually do to support us health wise and economically through this crisis, even with all good intentions.

Our experts are dealing with something they’ve never dealt with before just like we are. So it is incumbent upon us to take our own logic and ingenuity and compassion and share it with each other, so that ultimately we can all celebrate our victory.