Grit. Actualized Opportunity: Sunday musings…8/9/2026
1) Theo. “Purple Marlins fly in cursive”. Why yes, yes they do.
2) Lila. “What does it sound like when you read in cursive?”
It sounds like music my darling girl. Like music!
3) Cape Week. This past week would have been Cape Week. That magical week each year when my siblings, our spouses, most years my parents and all of their grandchildren gathered on the beach as one, big, mostly happy family. Family meals together. Lots of wine and Sundae School ice cream.
Boy, what a special thing that was!
Each year it would rain on only one day. We would take advantage of the respite from the sun and the sand and go as a family to see a movie. Typically an animated Disney movie. If the movie came out earlier we were all supposed to wait to see it at the Cape. Beth and I were thinking about this yesterday as we spent the day relaxing and watching the movie “Sheep Detectives.”
Beth: “That would have been the perfect Cape movie!” Indeed, it would have been perfect. We spent a goodly amount of time in the cocoon of memories of tiny, and then not so tiny children, almost all smiling almost all the time. My Mom and Dad at some of their happiest.
What a special time that was.
4) Grit. I found this piece as I was thinking more deeply about my last two posts on opportunity. Let’s take another look at the singular ingredient necessary to seize and take advantage of opportunity when it arises: grit.
What is it that produces vastly different work products, outcomes, from similarly situated and talented individuals? Why do two equally gifted athletes similar in every way achieve at different levels? How best to explain widely disparate test scores in math, for example, from the “best and brightest” students? There is something within those who succeed at the higher level that is somehow missing in the others, or at least missing the same degree of expression. It’s likely that there are a number of words or expressions that capture this quality, but I kinda like “grit”.
Grit begins with a belief in self, a sense of self-worth, of being worthy of success. Without this first step it’s rather easy to see how anyone might just give up before ever starting. Here, as my cousin Rick has pointed out, might be a true variable when discussing opportunity: those of us who grow up in a demanding family characterized by firm boundaries, unfailing support, and high expectations may actually have an unfair advantage. People with this type of upbringing truly do believe that the iron is always hot and that they are worthy and capable of striking. Without this foundation of belief in self it’s easy to see how one might look at the same iron and think only of how not to get burned.
To have grit one takes this core belief and puts it into action. Angela Duckworth, professor at Penn, calls passion and perseverance the two actionable components of grit. You have to want it, whatever it might be, and you have to work at making it happen. Ya ya…I know all about the lucky sperm club and all, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of people looked upon as lucky actually worked their asses off to get that way. Perseverance might very well be defined as ongoing maximal effort. One who has grit might not necessarily get the best outcome, but it’s not likely to be due to being out-worked at that thing called “it”.
An important sub-category of perseverance is resilience, and this is the final core attribute to grit. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from defeat with faith intact to resume the quest for “it”. Think about what comes to your mind when you hear someone described as “gritty”. It’s someone who has a passion, a commitment and a willingness to work toward an achievement. More than that, someone you think of as gritty has faced adversity or moved on after defeat. No one has a straight line to success; the gritty move on, secure in the knowledge that they are willing and able to do the work needed to succeed.
Grit is passion and perseverance bookended by a sense of worthiness on the front side, and the resilience to overcome setbacks on the back. Opportunity is wasted without it.
I’ll see you next week…
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2026 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.