Endurance

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
— George Bernard Shaw

We are not the fastest animals on the earth, nor are we strongest, the biggest, the hardiest or even the prettiest. But we are the most adaptible. You might argue that we're the smartest, but I think that smartness is only useful evolutionarily because of how quickly it let us adapt. Rather than wait for the slow cycles of our genetic adaptation, our intelligence acts as its own evolutionary engine, which can out-adapt nearly everything else.

You can find humans in just about every environmental niche across the planet. We live in heat and cold, on mountains, underground, under water, and in the air. Sure, you might find tardigrades in space, but you'll find us in space too, and we're the only ones playing guitar up there. It would seem we can put up with just about anything – but should we?

Often, getting something done requires just putting your head down and working, and not worrying too much about the bigger picture. You might experience inconveniences or other problems that slow you down, but rather than going meta and trying to fix them, it's sometimes more productive to just endure them and do the best you can. Otherwise you'll spend so much time fixing the meta-problems that you never get to the problem you set out to solve.

However, if you get too used to that attitude, how will you recognise when you need to stop enduring and fix your situation? Our ability to adapt is not the same thing as an obligation to adapt, and sometimes the most important thing we can do is recognise that it's not ourselves that need to change, but the things around us. Finding a way to just make it work can be beneficial, but it's dangerous to make it a habit. The problem isn't that you'll be unable to stand up when the time comes, but that the time will come and go without you even noticing.

You can't fight every battle, but you can fight some. I think it's important to figure out which battles are yours. What is important enough to you that you won't let it be bad just so that something else can be good? What won't you endure?