Wisdom is a complex human trait, characterized by a marriage of the intellect with the emotions, and put into action. By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. [attributed to Confucius] The saddest aspect of life right now is that science…
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Value for Saturday of Week 34 in the season of Interlude
Displaying Grit
Grit is perseverance enhanced by strong emotion, and an ability to continue despite costly setbacks.
- Grit is that “extra something” that separates the most successful people from the rest. It’s the passion, perseverance, and stamina that we must channel in order to stick with our dreams until they become a reality. [attributed to Travis Bradberry]
- Grittier students are more likely to earn their diplomas; grittier teachers are more effective in the classroom. Grittier soldiers are more likely to complete their training, and grittier salespeople are more likely to keep their jobs. The more challenging the domain, the more grit seems to matter. [Angela Duckworth]
- That’s a very nice compliment, for somebody to be described as having grit, having some gravel in the gut. [Jim Harbaugh]
Grit is defined as “perseverance and passion toward long-term goals and describes sustained commitment toward completing a specific endeavor despite episodes of failure, setbacks, and adversity”; and as “passion and perseverance to meet long-term goals, and also as the tendency to sustain interest and commitment to achieving worthy goals even if it requires sacrifice, struggle, and suffering.” “Grit was originally defined as one’s disposition to demonstrate perseverance and passion for long-term goals . . . Earlier studies have pointed out that grit was a higher-order construct composed of consistency of interests (ability to stick to a similar set of interests over time) and perseverance of effort (tendency to show diligence despite challenges or difficulties associated with pursuing a long-term goal), which could predict variety of positive performance outcomes . . .” “Grit is sometimes conceived to have two factors: persistence of interest, the tendency to continue activities over a long period, and commitment of effort, an inclination to overcome challenges and persevere until success is achieved.”
Researchers discuss associations between grit and “motivation, autonomy, mastery, and connection”; “increased life satisfaction and well-being”; meaning in life; psychological health; empathy; resilience and hope; working memory; and “academic retention, productivity, and academic achievement”, among many other associations. “. . . recent research has . . . revealed an association between grit and personal achievement linked to the brain activation of a specific area of the brain.” One study suggests that grit may be indistinguishable from self-control; this may reflect inadequate methodologies.
Grit conveys substantial personal benefits, including the following.
- “. . . increased grit is directly associated with decreased depressive and anxious symptoms and increased (emotional well-being) . . .”
- “Grit and resilience are significantly related to mental health, academic performance, and (quality of life) in children with (reading disorder).”
- “Higher grit scores were associated with lower odds of having depressive symptoms among residents at the timing of job start during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
- “. . . grit and hope have protective effects on psychological distress in clinical nurses.”
- “Grit is stable throughout older adulthood and may serve as a protective factor that promotes active adaptation to the developmental challenges of aging.”
- “The evidence supporting the important role that grit plays in the healthy development and success of individuals, and particularly adolescents is growing . . .”
Grit appears to have some adverse effects. “Grit is associated with decreased mental health help-seeking among student veterans”. “. . . grit may become maladaptive perseverance in the cases of individuals at risk of study addiction.”
Overall, grit is a positive, life-enhancing personal quality. It comes at a price but for people who know grit, the benefits are worth the costs.
Real
True Narratives
Book narratives:
- Ken Wilber, Grace and Grit: Spirituality and Healing In the Life and Death of Treya Killam Wilber (Shambhala, 1991).
- Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (Harper, 2011)
- Travis Mills, Tough As They Come (Center Point Publishing, 2016): this is a true story about a quadriple amputee.
- Melissa L. Sevigny, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon (W.W. Norton & Co., 2023): “. . . we meet the two scientists who explored unknown terrain — and broke barriers.”
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
- I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash: a documentary account of the 1972 plane crash in the Andes in which sixteen surviving members of a rugby team struggle to survive
- Stranded is another documentary film about the same subject
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
With a desperation that was madness, unmindful of the pain, he hurried up the slope to the crest of the hill over which his comrade had disappeared - more grotesque and comical by far than that limping, jerking comrade. But at the crest he saw a shallow valley, empty of life. He fought with his fear again, overcame it, hitched the pack still farther over on his left shoulder, and lurched on down the slope. [Jack London, “Love of Life” (1905).]
Novels:
- Keisha Bush, No Heaven for Good Boys: A Novel (Raondom House, 2021): “In Dakar, where the novel is set, Ibrahimah and Étienne are dispatched by their marabout to beg for money, food, rice or sugar. If they don’t make their increasingly higher quotas, they are beaten and abused.”
- Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway: A Novel (Viking, 2021): “In the universe of this novel, grit and integrity and determination matter, not because they get you where you want to go but because they allow you to persist when you’re inevitably blown off course by chance, vicissitude and the disruptive schemes of fellow questers.”
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Ludwig van Beethoven was in ill health, and feeling poorly most of the time, when Prince Nikolas Galitzin commissioned him to compose three new string quartets. One of these is his String Quartet No. 15 in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825) (approx. 45-50 ‘) (list of recorded performances). As in his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, the music progresses from dark to light, reflecting the composer’s personal struggles. “In 1825, two years before he died, the ailing composer suffered from a dreadful bowel inflammation. Throughout spring and summer, he endured the ghastly Brunonian system of medicine that wound up killing more people than the Napoleonic wars. Once recovered, he wrote a string quartet in which he represented the psychology of pain and illness in all its transcendent transparency.” “The subject matter of this quartet is pain and its transcendence . . . Music here appears to be an implicit agency of healing, a talisman against death.” The work has been called a “string quartet of transcendence”. Beethoven had already been coping with progressive deafness, a severe liability for a musician. His ability to compose exquisite music under these circumstances reminds us of our capacity to push through our difficulties, persevere and contribute to and in the world. Top recorded performances are by Busch Quartet in 1937, Budapest String Quartet in 1964, Quartetto Italiano in 1968, Takács Quartet in 2003, Belcea Quartet in 2013, Quartetto di Cremona in 2018, Brodsky Quartet in 2019, Tetzlaff Quartet in 2020, Ehnes Quartet in 2022, Danish String Quartet in 2022, Dover Quartet in 2022, Arianna String Quartet in 2023, and Narratio Quartet in 2025.
Dmitry Shostakovich, Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 (1948) (approx. 35-42’) (list of recorded performances): Across the four movements, it is a single troubled self—turning inward in the Nocturne (Oistrakh's phrase was "a suppression of feelings"), erupting into the demonic Scherzo, grieving through the Passacaglia, soliloquizing alone in that brutal Cadenza, and then driving into a grim, whirling Burlesque that refuses to quit. A self that grieves and rages and mocks but, as one writer put it, has not given up on life. “Music in response to — and in defiance of —an atmosphere of oppression. Kavokos suggests that such an environment pushed Shostakovich to write his monumental music. ‘These kinds of situations created for him this amazing power and drive to find a way. It's like, you know, sometimes you drive in the asphalt and all of a sudden you see a little green little plant that is kind of growing out of the asphalt and you say, my God, how is that possible? .... But this is the power of the will, you know, that somebody will do this, no matter what.’”
Wardruna is a “Norwegian music constellation dedicated to creating musical renditions of ancient Norse and Nordic traditions”. Its steady underpinning is a bass/baritone drum beat, coupled with vocals, mainly from baritone Einar Selvik, which evoke what life might have been like in the cold European North centuries ago. Even on their album “Skald”, the softer instrumental accompaniments are stark in tone. “Wardruna is closer to what Dead Can Dance could have been if they had left Australia and moved to the frozen Norwegian fjords.” Waldruna’s music expresses the difference between determination and grit: they take us through hard times and stark landscapes in a cold place. Here is a link to videos from the group, and brief explanatory films. Their albums include:
- “Birna” (2025) (67’): “Slowly driven out of her habitat by modern day societies, she has entered a stage of permanent hibernation. As a result, the forest is gradually dying, longing for its pulse and heart – its shepherd. Birna calls for her return.” “Conceptually, Birna is a response to the upheaval suffered by bears in nature (Birna means ‘she-bear’), musically harnessing the bear’s natural strength and signaling a hopeful end to their forced hibernation through a motif of spring. The music of Birna radiates with intent, carefully constructing this idea across every element.”
- “Kvitravn” (First Flight of the White Raven) (2021) (134’): “. . . the Norwegians’ darkly expansive folk brings the natural world and Nordic myth and history to vivid life using an impressive range of ancient instruments, from lyres to goat horns.”
- “Skald” (2018) (50’): “Skald was a term used for a poet who recited at the courts of Scandinavia and Iceland during the viking ages, and this album is true, honourable poetry.”
- “Runaljod Ragnarok” (Sound of Runes – Destruction of the Gods) (2015) (59’): “. . . the band have reached deep into both the heart of Nordic esoteric tradition and the consciousness of devoted followers worldwide, the organic and profoundly expressive nature of their music tapping into a resonance that, once experienced, feels like a rediscovery of something long dormant and universal – a reconnection with one’s roots no matter what part of the planet you call home . . .”
- “Runaljod - Yggdrasil” (Sound of Runes – Odin’s Horse) (2013) (66’): “Yggdrasil is the second in a projected trilogy of albums based around the runes of the Elder Futhark, the earliest alphabet used by Germanic tribes in the centuries before the Viking Age. The album is named, appropriately enough, for the immense tree linking the nine worlds of Norse mythology, on which Odin purportedly hung himself for nine days and in so doing acquired divine knowledge of the runes and their symbolism.”
- “Runaljod – gap var Ginnunga” (Sound of Runes – The Gap Was Vast) (2009) (66’): “Through their uniquely esoteric atmosphere, Wardruna is not only the sound of the darkest woods and deepest valleys, it is a sonic journey into what the Norse called ‘Ginnungagap’, which can be roughly translated to ‘The yawning void’; the primordial void which existed before the universe was created. Wardruna is a meditation on the mystical and sacred powers which was said to exist within this void.”
Albums:
- Amy Winehouse, “Back to Black” (2006) (35’): “What Winehouse had to say was despondent and troubling, but when her voice soars on the chorus of Tears Dry on Their Own, or the intro to You Know I’m No Good sashays out of the speakers, it doesn’t feel like hard work.”
- Public Enemy, “Fear of a Black Planet” (1990) (137’) is “a sprawling, messy, politically charged, and ultimately humanistic album. It features the crew’s frontman Carlton ‘Chuck D’ Ridenhour and hypeman William ‘Flavor Flav’ Drayton trying to envision the future, and taking chances as performers.”
- As a black artist in the United States in the early 1960s, Oliver Nelson must have known about being gritty. “The Blues and the Abstract Truth” (1961) (37’) is musically evocative of taking on harsh realities. “Nelson composed and arranged the tracks on the album, and did so in a fashion that just about summed up the essence of the hard bop sound that had been building momentum since the mid-1950s.” The album was so successful that Nelson further affirmed it with “More Blues and the Abstract Truth” (1964) (49’).
- D'Angelo and the Vanguard, “Black Messiah” (2014) (56’) “follows a decade of public silence in which D’Angelo grappled with drugs, alcohol and a 2005 car crash that broke half his ribs. Stardom also shook him up, particularly the way he was treated as a sex symbol after he flaunted his body on the cover of ‘Voodoo’ and in the video for ‘Untitled (How Does It Feel’), which lingered over his six-pack abs. He returned to performing, relying on his old songs, only in 2012 . . .”
Compositions:
- Harrison Birtwistle, “Beyond the White Hand: Construction with Guitar Player” (2013) (approx. 14-18’) focuses on the physical labor and the mechanical grit of the guitar. “. . . the uneven resonance of the guitar allows a way into (or out of) Birtwistle’s harmonic language.”
- Witold Lutosławski, Cello Concerto (1970) (approx. 24-26') (recordings) stands as one of the most uncompromising expressions of individual persistence in the face of chaos in the orchestral repertoire — the solo cello maintains its distinct voice against an orchestra that alternately ignores, overwhelms, and actively disrupts it, never capitulating to the collective pressure. The work enacts grit structurally: the soloist does not triumph over the orchestra so much as endure alongside it, asserting identity not through victory but through refusal to be silenced. As the musicologist Charles Bodman Rae has observed, the concerto dramatizes "the isolation of the individual in a hostile environment" — making it less a virtuoso showpiece than a portrait of sustained moral and psychological resistance.
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone" (lyrics)
- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue" (lyrics)
Visual Arts
Lee Krasner, Volcanic (1951)
Film and Stage
- Places in the Heart: a young widow keeps her farm after her husband’s death during the Great Depression with persistence and hard work
- Alive, a dramatization of a true story about people who survive a plane crash in the Andes by extraordinary means, including cannibalism
