Endure…for Days of Happiness

There is a short sentence from Vergil that says: “Endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.”¹ There are times when we feel that we can’t endure that we can’t face what’s ahead of us; that we can’t live with the disappointments, the problems; that we can’t carry the heavy load. But these times come and go, as our strength and courage and circumstances run in cycles from high to low to high and in the low times we have to endure; we have to hold on until the shadow brighten, until the load lifts. “No one could endure adversity, ” said Seneca, “if, while it continued, it kept the same violence that its first blows had. . .”² People often issue ultimatums. They say they can’t or won’t stand this or that not another minute. “I’m leaving it all. I want out.” Such times could be likened to a circuit breaker or a fuse that blows when overloaded. We do wonder if we can take it at times but there are built-in safety factors, and we find that the human soul the spirit, the body, the mind of man are resilient. There is more built-in strength in all of us than we sometimes suppose. And what once we said we couldn’t do or couldn’t live with or couldn’t carry, we find ourselves somehow doing and enduring, as time, reappraisal, readjustment, and sometimes sheer necessity, modify our sense of values and our attitudes, and we find strength and endurance and hidden resources within ourselves. “Life is real! Life is earnest!”³ as the poet put it, and facing facts, adjusting to life isn’t always easy. But before we give up, we should most seriously, consider what we are giving up and what we are going to. “The frying pan to the fire” is an old phrase that has much meaning. Well, thus endeth the lesson to pause, to reappraise, to take time for hope, for faith, and for strength to return remembering, as Solon said it: “If all men were to bring their miseries together in one place, most would be glad to take . . . home again . . .each his own.”⁴ “Endure, and keep yourselves for days of happiness.”1