“As astronauts spend time in space, weightlessness causes muscle atrophy. With little or no resistance required to move, their muscles and bones harden and retract. Astronauts in their thrities can return to earth with the bone density of people in their seventies…just as too much gravity is oppressive and crushing, the loss of gravity doesn’t free us but causes us to atrophy and disintegrate at an accelerated rate.”-Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen
What does gravity have to do with success? Everything.
Gravity in the sense of your pursuits is the same as resistance, adversity, struggle, challenge…it is what makes you stronger, better, more capable, and eventually more confident. Working through the inevitable challenges that a life of meaning will present to you is like the fire that forges the steel.
Look at someone who has endured struggle and emerged on top. How do they see their next challenge? They see it as doable. They see it as a forgone conclusion that they will win. They might not know exactly how yet, or in what time frame, but they are steeped in the confidence from having faced up to, and conquered the challenges of the past.
They know that if they persist against the forces that would tell them NO, that they will soon make those forces fall away. They know that perserverance and conviction will win. They know that the demonstration of those characateristics will eventually wear down even their staunchest critics and likely bring them to their side or leave them in their wake wondering what happened.
Appreciate the gravity in this life, and feel it honing and sharpening you. Then use what it has blessed you with to reach your dreams.
