A-Z promising quotes: Endurance

The MS life takes endurance and plenty of it. Pain, fatigue, stress, vertigo, inexplicable numbness and tingling, mental fog, and other multiple sclerosis symptoms seem to set us back and make us stumble in frustration and confusion. Occasionally, simply going on another day seems to take all the endurance one can muster.

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) said this about endurance:

“A man on a 1,000-mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover 25 miles and then rest up and sleep.’”

Leo Tolstoy

in War and Peace

This quotation encourages me, especially as an MSer.

Hey, I’m all for setting goals and prizing them. I believe we can accomplish plenty and derive a healthy sense of motivation by focusing on targets. But I also know the dreaded overwhelmed feeling that can result from a fixation on the enormity of a mission.

Consider Tolstoy. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have MS. But he surely had endurance. Can you imagine writing a book as long as War and Peace? (Just try reading it. It’s a classic, but it takes endurance to get through that many pages!)

Anyone living with multiple sclerosis knows firsthand how energy levels and physical capabilities can run out suddenly and without warning. A day’s plans can change in an instant, simply because the MonSter decides to zap us with total exhaustion, crippling numbness, excruciating pain, or other onslaughts.

But sometimes, breaking up a big plan into more manageable pieces can be both practical and encouraging.

Few of us are going to walk 1,000 miles anytime soon. We may not even walk to the mailbox. But we can take life a few steps at a time , even figuratively, and really go someplace.

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