50 Stories Tall: The Second Story - Pain and Persistence

Proverbial people are always talking about how taking the first step into any endeavor is by far the most difficult. 

Proverbial people are dumb and smell like suspect cheese.

In this second full week of a new year that’s unlike any other new year, we’re gonna focus on what it means to persist. What it means to go beyond that first step and swing the other leg around to the second step before you lose your balance, fall to the concrete, and give yourself a nasty raspberry on your stupid goddamned knee. 

See, there’s this really bizarre tradition we’ve embraced around here - in the dead of Winter, right after an extended period of pushing the reasonable elasticity of our midriffs - to commit ourselves to stop being enormous heaps of fetid, wobbly flan. 

New Year, New Me - that’s the working theory, right? As if a clock ticking to midnight ever made anyone better at anything. Are you not familiar with a young sass-mouth named Cinderella? 

Those 12 gongs on the clocktower are meant to wake you up outta your delusion. 

See, I think that the true promise of the New Year’s Resolution? is symbolic, driving one toward evaluation and effort not just immediately after the first midnight of a dark winter, but in all things undertaken throughout your year.

The point here is not only that you have to try with that first step or resolution, but you must continue to try.

Persistence. 

I say this not only as a reminder to myself to continue my commitment to write here weekly, but also as a friendly reminder to you that in both business and your personal life, the ongoing effort is entirely the point.  

The Thing That Looms, this global viral nightmare, has pushed us all to the brink of what we’d previously thought reasonable in every facet of our lives. And, as such, has pushed us into a place of wait-and-see on many fronts.

In my industry, marketing, the predictable has happened. Brands have largely been holding their breath, waiting and wondering what to do. Even in non-pandemic recessions, companies often make marketing the first cuts, as it somehow feels like the easy choice.

This article from Harvard Business Review argues the opposite, however. And it’s a lesson in persistence. 

Now, this isn’t a suggestion of business-as-usual, as obviously that’s not possible. But rethinking the ways in which we can continue to reach out to the consumers of our brands is as important as ever. 

Have you ever felt a time in your life when you’ve been more desperate for connection? Some kind of shared community of hope? Why is your brand not making those connections?

Consider a company highlighted in the HBR article, Coca-Cola:

“In 2020, the company used its advertising budget to showcase the work of frontline workers, creating mini stories about unsung heroes. The Coca Cola brand features subtly in the background of these messages, reminding consumers that Coca Cola always has been, and always will be there for you, in good times and bad.”

Connections, in big and small ways. Persistence of message and vision. One step, then the next. Storytelling.

Which leads me to this week’s personal story time. I hope you’ll take a few minutes on your own to quickly consider times when you took not just the first step into something new and adventurous, but then continued to the second step, into a shaky unknown. And how could your company and brand be better pushing forward, beyond the timid first steps?

*****

Here’s my weird little tale of persistence:

In 1985, I was young and naive enough to think I could join in with an enormous group of people, riding my bicycle all the way across my home state.  It’s one of them wide-in-the-middle-looking midwestern suckers too – Iowa. 

And that year, the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) set out its longest course in the history of the annual event: 540 miles over seven days.  

Riding across the entire breadth of a rolling state that’s covered in corn and cows, stopping through small towns and smaller towns only to rest and eat, is a truly fantastic adventure. 

You talk to people, while the late July sun bears down from above and then bounces back from the asphalt below. 

You listen, because there’s time and rhythm and interesting perspectives. Everyone you come across is wildly different and comfortingly similar.  

Sometimes along the way, when you think about it, you remember your legs are moving. You try to put that out of your mind, because then you remember your legs are attached to your back, and then you notice how your back kinda wraps around to the front and down your arms and OH MY GOD, WHY IS EVERYTHING THROBBING IN PAIN. 

So, you stop for a bit, and you lay down in some small section of shaded tall grass. You imagine the earth sinking beneath your body, and enveloping your entire weary being, and somehow healing it and then pushing you back, upright and refreshed. But that doesn’t happen. Mostly, maybe an ant nibbles at a numb ankle.

This repeats day after day, little town after tiny farm, until you’ve exhausted conversation and carbohydrates and your last nerve. 

And so it was that on Day 6 of the event, I found myself sitting in the middle of a park in some Rockwell painting of a hamlet, completely consumed by the road and the sun and the sound and the pain. I gave up. I’d taken the first step, and then the second, and kept going until I had nothing more in any cell in my body. There was simply. no. more. 

I quit.

Or at least I tried to quit.

In order to give up, I had to load my bike into the support truck and wait for my dad to ride through, so he knew where I was and that I was safe. 

So I hung my bike on the hooks in the back of the truck and sat and waited. I’d like to say that an overwhelming sense of shame and regret overcame me as I flung the bike onto those hooks, but I was just overjoyed. Giddy.

In that moment, I hated that bike, and my hands, and the stone pillars that were now my thighs. Bicycles are stupid and pain is dumb and you’re dumb and things that I didn’t know could go numb were numb.

I sat and waited for my dad. Had cell phones been invented yet, this story would be over right here.

But, as it happened, I couldn’t find my dad. Through the throng of people and bikes and onlookers, it had never been difficult before. For some reason, I could always pick out his profile, way faster than Waldo. But I either missed him riding through, or he was a lot further behind me than I thought, or he was somehow ahead of me? Was that possible? Damn it, where was he?

I sat there too long. Just beyond the pain in my hands and the thumping in my calves, a little angry voice started to poke through. 

Regret. 

Goddamn it. 

My bike creaked against the hooks in the back of the truck, as the breeze caught it just slightly. 

You fucker. 

Goddamn. 

“OKAY!”, I shouted. “OKAY! Pull the bike out. Fine. Shit.”

Persistence feels a lot like giving up.

The bike was in my hands, rolling next to me.

What am I doing?

I swung my leg over that stupid seat, and my right calf, in front of witnesses, screamed, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Hand to god. 

And I rode. And I pedaled, and I just drifted off over the horizon, miles and miles to go until the next town. 

At the end of that day, surprisingly quickly for some reason, I found my dad wandering around town, and told him the whole story. 

“Huh.” he said. “Are you glad you finished the day?”

“I guess, yeah. Now that it’s done.”

“You wanna wrap it up tomorrow? Just finish out the rest?”

“Yeah, I guess, sure.” 

And we did. We rode our bikes across the state, dipping our back tires in the Missouri River at the start and our front tires in the Mississippi River at the end.  

Persistence.  

You can have infinite beginnings, but if you don’t push through to more productive middles, then you’re never going to get to the endings that you want.

Cory helps lead Marketing and Client Leadership at YAH agency in Atlanta, pushing brands to lead with creative storytelling, persistent messaging, and memorable experiences. His passions are writing, photography, and annoying his co-workers.