Introduction
A great American President named Eleanor Roosevelt once stated that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. To many, this ideally means perseverance. So what exactly is perseverance? Perseverance can be defined as the ability to hold on or go on even when things appear to be headed in a hopeless direction. Perseverance is basically the ruler through which measures of success can be made. Alternatively, it is used to signify the level or amount of sacrifices that an individual is willing and ready to make in seeking or pursuing success.
Success is indeed a virtue that is desired every member of the human race. However, achieving this virtue is no easy task. Along the way, there are very many hurdles and failures that have to be cleared or overcome before success is achieved. The single undying quality that every successful individual in the universe has is usually the perseverance quality. This is essentially the quality that makes things that are seemingly impossible become quite possible.Perseverance must however be accompanied by another important virtue and this is wisdom. One should be comprehensively clear about their life priorities before making the choice to be perseverant. This essentially means that one should make life choices that are worth persevering for. This is because as much as one may not really want to stop or quit doing something that they are engaged by virtue of being perseverant, this persistence may actually be on things that are not really helpful at all or things that one does not even want in the first place.
Lionel Messi is a soccer player form Argentina who plays for the Spanish soccer club Barcelona as a forward. He is also the captain of the Argentine national soccer team. For a number of years, Messi has been the core and main talisman of the Barcelona team despite his relatively young age. He has won the prestigious FIFA World Player of the Year foe for a record four times. He has recently become one of the few players to score over 200 goals in the Spanish soccer league famously known as La Liga. In fact, Messi is easily rated by most soccer enthusiast as the best soccer player in the world. On the way, he has already amassed a quite large list of trophies and titles and this list is certain to expand as time goes on.
The above accolades might make Messi look like the perfect success story. However, his has not been an easy path. His life is the perfect testament to ability, talent love, pain, sacrifice, hope and perseverance. It is really a story that shows how perseverance can actually change one’s destiny and lead to a level of success never imagined. He has essentially shown the universe that with perseverance and grit, nothing is quite impossible. Messi was born in an impoverished part of Argentina known as Rosario in the Santa Fe Province. His father named Jorge Messi was a steel factory worker while his mother held a regular cleaning job. Messi first started playing soccer at a local club known as Grandoli. He later switched to the Newell’s Old Boys.
When he was eleven years old, it was found out that Messi had rare growth deficiency syndrome. This syndrome made. Although he still displayed exciting talent at that time, this diagnosis drove many clubs that had shown interest in away. To deal with his growth deficiency, he had to take daily medication (Caioli 13). This medication would actually add up to about 900 dollars a month. His family could not raise this amount. In addition, most of the soccer clubs in Argentina did not have the will to pay for his treatment costs.
This was a period of desperation for Messi and his family. It was one of those periods in life when one can just quit or give up. However, Messi and his family never gave up. Messi condition did not deter him from his desire to succeed at the highest level.
The Sporting Director of the Barcelona football team was actually the one who provided Messi with the initial platform to succeed. Despite, his condition, the director had belief in Messi and even managed to persuade the club to pay for his treatment (Caioli 45). Messi and his father however had to travel to Spain and there he underwent trial with the Barcelona team where he was then accepted into the academy.
The story of Wilma Rudolph is on of perseverance and determination. Rudolph was a great American splinter who was actually considered as the world’s fastest woman in the 1950’s and 1960’s. She was the first American female athlete to collect three gold medals at a single Olympics event.
Rudolph was born in 1940 to a family with a relatively humble background. Her father worked as railway porter and her mother was a maid. Rudolph actually had a premature birth and weighed a mere 4.5 pounds. She had 21 siblings.
Rudolph contracted the deadly infantile paralysis which a subset of the polio disease at an early age. She also suffered from several serious bouts of scarlet fever and pneumonia. These ailments led her to develop an impaired leg. Because of this leg, some speculated that she would never walk again, let alone run (Nickerson, Web).
Rudolph could have easily been discouraged because of these ailments. However, she and her family never lost hope. Her family ensured that she acquired the necessary medical attention and treatment and her ailments were eventually cured. However, she had to wear a leg and brace up to the age of because her leg had become twisted as a result of the polio related ailments. She had to spend another two years wearing an special orthopedic shoe for her foot.
At the age of 123, Rudolph was finally free of all her ailments and could now focus on her dreams of being an athlete. She eventually started as basketball player but she later switched to track athletics. She was spotted by a track athletics coach, Ed Temple who knew that she was bound to succeed. She continuously expanded her talent and was able to participate in the 1956 Olympics. However, her main success came in the 1960 games where she won three gold medals.
Although she passed away in 1994, Wilma Rudolph story is surely one that exhibits her persevering nature and is therefore an inspiration to all people in the world (Nickerson, Web).The late Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24, 1955. His is another inspirational story of perseverance and determination.
His parents who were college students put him up for adoption at an early age. He was adopted by Paul Jobs and Clara Jobs. His mother initially wanted him to be adopted by college graduates but after finding out the Jobs were actually not college graduates, she initially declined to sign the necessary adoption papers. She however agreed to sign after a promise from the Jobs that her son would go to college.
Steve Jobs indeed went to college but he had to drop out because the college fees were considerably too high for him and he had no way to raise the enormous amount. The college that he was enrolled in called the Reed College, located in Portland, Oregon was very expensive. His parents spent almost all their entire life savings on his higher education. But after six months, Jobs inadvertently had to drop out.
Steve Jobs did not however lose hope. He enrolled in a creative class where he spent 18 months learning various creative arts including calligraphy. During this time, he sleeping place was a floor at the dorm room of a friends. He used to return old Coke bottles to retailers to obtain money for food expenses (Time 15).
Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak who he met in 1971 initiated a path that led to the eventual success of the Apple Corporation. Although they had no capital in the initial stages of their course, they persevered and were able to obtain capital through several unconventional means.Today, Apple is one of the most recognized corporations in the world. Its profit margins are unmatched and this is all due to the determination and perseverance of one young man and a group of his friends (Time 25).
Although Jobs passed away in 2011, he definitely left a huge legacy behind. His story is often used in various circles to serve as an inspiration.The above stories clearly display the huge role that perseverance plays in achieving success. The most blatant aspect that comes from the three inspiration stories is that for one to indeed succeed in life, perseverance is paramount.
Works Cited
Nickerson, Nancy. "Wilma Rudolph." The MY HERO Project. N.p., 15 Jan. 2013. Web. 13 April.2013.
Caioli, Luca. Messi: The Inside Story of the Boy Who Became a Legend. Thriplow: Corinthian, 2010. Print
"The Career of Apple and Steve Jobs". Time. 2007. Retrieved 2013-04-13
Deutschman, . The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Broadway. 2007
