The Enduring Message

Ernest Hemingway has been my favorite writer for a long time. He's got some phenomenal stories and books where he did things with the English language that had never been done before, which have influenced people ever since. Without a doubt he lived one of the fullest lives of any person I have ever read about. He squeezed more life into his sixty one years than many people who live full lives will achieve put together.

The thing that always stays with me about Hemingway is the message of his work. In some ways, for me, EH is almost more of a philosophical figure than anything else. In his stories, he cast his characters in terrible situations. They faced war, death, defeat, and loss in a variety of forms and the point that Hemingway routinely made was the importance of showing "Grace Under Pressure." He basically told us that life sucked, and that it sucked for everyone, but that the most important thing you had to do was face it with strength and dignity. When you really think about it, he couldn't be more correct.

I don't think it's negative to say that life is full of disappointment. Thirty two teams compete in the National Football League for the SuperBowl title. Thirty one of them lose in the end. Tens of thousands of people will run in the Marine Corps Marathon every year in Washington, DC. All but one of them will lose. Those numbers are staggering.

We've all faced hard times. There have been periods in my life when I've thought, "I don't know if I can take much more of this." It seemed like loss and negativity were around every corner. But each time things didn't get better, I found myself stronger. In fact, there were times when I realized that I didn't know how strong I actually was and as corny as it sounds, I often went back to Hemingway at those moments. He once said, "To live, one must endure," and that's all I tried to do. When things did finally change for the better, I marveled the most at my own endurance and refusal to give in to those circumstances.

Thanks Papa.