KEEP PUSHING | GNOMIC Motivation

Keep pushing—’tis wiser than sitting aside

And dreaming and sighing and waiting the tide,

In life’s earnest battle they only prevail

Who daily march onward and never say fail.

In life’s rosy morning, in manhood’s firm pride,

Let this be the motto your footsteps to guide:

In storm and in sunshine, whatever assail,

We’ll onward and conquer, and never say fail.

—Anonymous

A Wrinkle in Time, the best-selling novel written by Madeleine L’Engle, was dismissed by eight publishers before it was eventually published. For L’Engle, the decade of her thirties was set on the spin cycle of rejection.

On her fortieth birthday, her husband called her in her writing studio to say that another rejection letter had come from yet another publisher. In a fit of melancholic despair, L’Engle shrouded her typewriter with a sheet. She would never write again.

Thankfully, her resolve did not last long. L’Engle asked for the manuscript back from her agent, and it arrived as a heavy parcel of bundled typewritten sheets. Two weeks later, with the manuscript in her possession, she was introduced to another editor. He asked to read the manuscript. In another week, she had signed a contract to publish the novel.

“When the book was rejected by publisher after publisher, I cried out in my journal. I wrote, after an early rejection, “X turned down Wrinkle, turned it down with one hand while saying that he loved it, but didn’t quite dare do it, as it isn’t really classifiable. I know it isn’t really classifiable… but this book I’m sure of. If I’ve ever written a book that says what I feel about God and the universe, this is it. This is my psalm of praise”.

[ Source: Teach us to Want: Longing, Ambition, and the Life of Faith by Jen Pollock Michel ]

We are bound to encounter various forms of rejection in life. The going is bound to get tough sometimes. But like the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Don’t give up . Keep pushing. It gets better!