Effort

Sometimes I can be a little preachy – just ask my kids. Or my husband, for that matter. Okay, ask anyone who knows me. Today, wonderful readers (and I do think you’re wonderful because I am just amazed I have readers!), you will find this out about me too.

It bothers me beyond belief when people don’t put their full effort into whatever it is they are working on. Why not put in 100% (or more) effort? What makes people just do enough to get by? Why waste talent and energy and intelligence? Why give up just because something might be a little (or a lot) challenging? My favorite quotes are those dealing with persistence, tenacity and never giving up.

“Failure is falling down nine times and getting up ten.” -- Jon Bon Jovi

“Success consists of getting up one more time than you fall.” -- Oliver Goldsmith

As a part-time freelance writer with a goal of doing so full-time, quotes like these have to be my mantras or I would never get anything published.

The topic of effort has been on my mind lately because I find myself comparing the effort Robert puts in to every day activities to an Unnamed Son’s attitude of skating through school (and life). It takes Robert almost two hours to shave, change and brush his hair in the morning (and that’s without a shower!). It takes Unnamed Son thirty minutes to get ready in the morning (one minute to shower, change, brush his teeth, do his hair and put in his contacts and 29 minutes to let the shower run for no reason).

It takes Robert four months to finish 119 word search puzzles, concentrating hard on each word and then slowly going through the letters of the puzzle to finally circle the hidden word. He loves to tell me about the theme of the puzzle or how many words he has left. He carries the puzzle book with him (along with his pen and reading glasses) wherever we go and always pulls it out in the car or in a doctor’s waiting room.

Unnamed Son didn’t open a school book all year (and it showed).

Now that Unnamed Son has graduated (yes, amazingly, they let you graduate even if you fail a class or two), his efforts haven’t improved. Okay, it’s only been a week since graduation and two days since his graduation party but his plans for the future change depending on who he is talking to at the moment.

I’m not sure where he learned that it is okay to put in just enough effort to get by. No one else in the family does this. (Terrible parent alert! Comparing children ahead!) Daughters 1 & 2 wear themselves out with the tremendous amount of effort they put into school (and all their extracurricular activities) and are set to graduate from college next year.

I do recognize there are plenty of people in society who believe the “it’s okay to just get by” behavior is okay. It is difficult for me to understand it and extremely difficult not to judge it (because along with being preachy, I can be judgmental).

Robert had his share of rebellion as a teenager trying to cope with being “different.” Robert struggled through high school and, frankly, our mom was quite relieved when he actually was able to graduate. After graduation, Robert went on to take a few classes at a community college but finally had to stop when the seizures and medications affected him too much to continue. To this day, he thinks he got a “BA in Psychology” and tells people of this achievement all the time. Of course, I don’t correct him because he put in so much time and effort in trying to take a few classes that I don’t have the heart to tell him he couldn’t finish.

Unnamed Son doesn’t have Epilepsy or anything else to overcome (unless you count an addiction to video and computer games) but before getting too frustrated with him I have to remind myself I have seen glimpses of effort by Unnamed Son when his interest is piqued (like when he plays football or when he talks about becoming a police officer or when discussing military history with his dad and uncles).

This gives me hope.

I suppose I could also say he puts a lot of effort into his online games but I don’t want to encourage him.