This morning (on any given day of the week) a video about lbalance.king.w “popped up” on my instagram account. It’s not the first time, I admit, but this time it made me think about one of the characteristics of P.E. It’s about perseverance.
Some of you may be wondering what this account has to do with perseverance. It is very simple. What made me think about perseverance was the number of times the “man in the video” (sometimes accompanied) has to repeat his “attempt” to achieve his goal (balancing between objects of different materials, sizes and weights).
It is true that it makes you wonder whether the videos are real or not. If they are not, I am left with the need to underline this quality of P.E. Because the truth is that perseverance has been with us since childhood. Think, for example, of how many times a child falls down and gets up again when learning to walk.
When babies are learning to walk, they fall on average 17 times an hour. Given that frequency of falls, you might think their little brains carefully computed all that negative input so they could learn from their errors. Apparently, that’s just not so. Babies don’t change their behavior based on negative feedback, according to researchers at NYU’s Infant Action Lab… Their drive to get from Point A to Point B makes a little thing like falling inconsequential in the scheme of things. And when they do fall, it’s a low-stakes venture with extremely rare negative consequences. So off they go, toddle, tumble, toddle.(Compton, 2021).
And you, do you persevere? Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that makes our perseverance diminish as we get older? Is it a question of culture? or of education?
I invite you, just out of curiosity, to visit the lbalance.king.w account and see if that makes us a little more aware that not everything in life is a gift and that perseverance together with effort are great qualities that, hopefully, will continue to accompany me day after day.
Thank you for still being there.
