Perseverance: It Has a Cost

“करत करत अभ्यास के, जड़मति होत सुजान। रसरी आवत जात ते, सिल पर परत निशान॥ -- महाकवि बृन्द”

“With practice, even an untrained mind can grow wise; a rope, passing over stone again and again, eventually leaves its mark.”

This is one of those phrases I grew up with. I remember being in Eighth grade and participating in a debate competition. I don't remember exactly what the topic was anymore, but I remember starting my debate with this doha. Back then, its meaning felt simple: keep trying, keep practising, keep going. Even a rope, if it passes over a stone enough times, can eventually leave a mark on it. Perseverance can make seemingly impossible things possible.

And now, probably decades later, I find myself thinking about the other side of it. We are always taught to look at the stone and the mark the rope eventually leaves on it. But what about the rope? Every time it rubs against the stone, the stone loses a little of itself, but so does the rope. If the rope is a human and the stone is their dream, then yes, perhaps with enough perseverance they will eventually leave their mark. But what does that process do to the human?

Maybe some of what gets worn away is fear, inexperience, or self-doubt. Maybe the friction itself changes us into the people capable of reaching the things we once couldn't. But it can take other things too: our time, our energy, our comfort, our relationships, sometimes even parts of who we used to be. We talk so much about perseverance as though the only thing changing is the thing we are trying to achieve. But the process changes us too.

Maybe that doesn't make perseverance any less beautiful. I still believe in this doha, probably as much as I did when I first read it all those years ago. I still believe that if you keep going, the rope can eventually leave a mark on the stone. I just see something now that I didn't see then: the rope gets worn in the process too.

Maybe growing older hasn't changed what the doha means to me. It has just made me see both sides of it. The stone carries the mark of the rope, but the rope carries the journey too. And perhaps chasing a dream isn't only about whether we can keep going long enough to leave a mark. It is also about who we become in the process, what gets worn away, and whether, when we finally reach it, we recognize the person who made it there.

Food for thought.

An old well in my village in Bihar, India, photographed during one of my visits a couple of years ago.