White Knuckling It

For a long time I called it luck.

I was nineteen, driving through Georgia in the middle of the night when the car blew a tire. We slid sideways through a median. A police officer told us he had never seen a car go into a median like that and not flip.

I walked away. And I didn't think twice about what that meant.

We do the same thing at work. We white knuckle it through the hard seasons. Impossible deadlines. Absorbing extra work without naming the cost. Telling ourselves we'll make it work, and meaning it, even when we're already running on empty.

We survive. And then we move on without ever asking what that moment showed us about ourselves.

That's not resilience. That's just endurance.