Again, Again, and Again

Again, Again, and Again

John Paul Derryberry

While it's a lifelong process to figure out what makes us unique, and life is full of twists and turns where we may never fully understand ourselves; yet, minor signs at numerous life stages can give insight into who we might become. One of the first moments that revealed a little about my nature was a Saturday morning 2nd-or-3rd-grade basketball hour practice. I could not make a left-handed lay-up. So, I made slight adjustment after slight adjustment; stayed after the practice; and kept trying until I finally sank one.

It's a peek into the resiliency I was either developing or unearthing. Of course, when that young, I didn't know what resiliency was or that it would come to define my approach to life. As I caught up this past weekend with a professor, he kept circling back to the notion- the ability I had to enter a room and engage in small changes. You only know how small changes impact your life or others once their weight tips the scales.

The evolution of this is the notion, the idea, that we have to figure out how to again, again, and again enter into the fray; that minor improvements are good enough and often a significant enough target to aim for repeatedly. Those types of changes are often seen as too little or not a big enough leap into a healthier life. In reality, it's all we are capable of during that moment. Often, the people who figure out how to keep coming and working, find success at some point in that process.

It's a relatively simple notion: keep trying, just keep making minor adjustments again, again and again, and at some point, you land on some success. From a young age to now, whether I knew what I was doing or not, buried deep in genetics or from being the 3rd child, I have had to keep coming, keep trying to find success. I have only wanted to pass that on to others; a commitment to make minor improvements to life leads us to the best place again, again, and again.