#perseverence

“We pretend at certainty all of the time, even in the stumbling that life almost always is.”

In our latest feature, longtime Longreads author Devin Kelly returns with a new essay that explores overcoming shame and inertia to discover the beauty of learning something new. 

On Saturday afternoon, as dusk was falling, Algy had observed that a box marked "Urgent Live Plants" was delivered to his assistant, too late in the day for her to do anything with it other than put it in a safe place until the morrow. Upon enquiring what was in it, Algy learned that it was a consignment of snowdrops "in the green", and that they needed to be planted in the garden without delay, for they were living, growing plants.

As his friends will already know, Algy is particularly fond of snowdrops, for they emerge from the darkness as heralds of the spring to come, and their resilient flowers brighten up the start of the year when little else in the wild west Highlands of Scotland shows any sign of life at all.

And so, on Sunday morning, Algy volunteered to help plant them out, as there seemed to be rather a lot of them and there was evidently no time to lose. Wrapping his scarf around his neck against the bitter wind, Algy set to with considerable eagerness, doing his best to dig a hole in an area of dry ground beneath some trees and shrubs where the snowdrops were destined to grow, but he soon discovered that not only was the soil full of matted roots and very difficult to work, but a fluffy bird is apparently not at all well adapted to the tasks of digging and planting.

As he struggled on, wondering how on earth he could possibly manage to plant ten of the snowdrops, never mind two hundred, an inquisitive robin hopped over to see what was going on, for there are few things which interest a robin more than a wee bit of digging. Perceiving that Algy was experiencing some difficulties, the robin sang a snatch of a motivational poem to encourage him, safe in the knowledge that he could not be asked to assist as he was too small…

Algy muttered something unintelligible and decidedly un-fluffy under his breath, but then looked up and smiled sweetly at the robin… and tried again, repeating the robin's song…

When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it’s vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through!