Endurance is the quietest form of heroism. It’s the ability to survive, to resist, to remain true to one’s aims. Most training programmes require endurance, whether as a soldier, an athlete or writing a doctorate. Wilderness survival courses are designed to test both the emotional and physical strength of participants.

Survival in the face of near impossible conditions is seen as a primal urge that defines the human spirit and has motivated expeditions across the world. These include extreme sports and space travel to name a few.

The world is in awe that John Fairfax rowed solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1969 and Benoit Lecomte swam across sections of it in 1998 or that Samina Baig and Naila Kiani, in July this year, reached the summit of the treacherous mount K2, which has taken 66 lives.

Endurance can also be a resistance to those wanting to destroy the human spirit. Nael al Barghouti has been in an Israeli prison since 1978 when, as a 21-year-old, he was arrested for resisting Israeli occupation — the longest sentence endured by a political prisoner. His spirit has survived 44 years of incarceration.

Nelson Mandela, who led South Africa out of apartheid, writes in his book The Art of Endurance about his years in South Africa prisons — that the secret of endurance was “the sacred art of making light out of darkness.”

Less noticed is everyday endurance. Trainer Bruk Ballenger calls pregnancy the ultimate endurance achievement. Over 280 days, a woman’s body creates an entirely new human being, requiring an energy level that reaches the upper limit of what a human body can endure.

There is the endurance of the poor, who work day after day in difficult, often subhuman conditions, to feed their families without any hope of improving their lives, where survival itself is the greatest achievement.

Endurance as a positive decision, rather than a passive response, has marked the resilience of indigenous people, despite widespread depression, shame and loss of self-respect, at having lost their lands, traditions and beliefs. Resilience gave strength to oppressed people to overthrow colonial powers, or to rise up against an uncaring elite in the revolutions in France, Russia and China.

The African American reformer Frederick Douglass said, “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” The freedom fighter Muhammad Ali Jauhar wrote “Hai meri ibtida teri inteha ke baad [I begin when you reach the extremes of your oppression].”

Oppression is internalised by colonised people, by the poor, by stereotyped marginalised communities, even children in authoritarian families, who begin to believe the myths propagated by their oppressors. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire says the oppressed can change their circumstances through analysis, reflection and action. Today, social media and access to the internet is enabling the oppressed to be heard.

Endurance implies suffering and patience. Most religions explain extreme suffering and despair as necessary to realise that our ultimate dependence is on God. The Bible says, “Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.” The Quran says, “How often has a small host overcome a great host by God’s leave! For God is with those who are patient in adversity.”

One of the cornerstones of the Hajj, is a lesson in endurance, as devotees retrace the steps of Hajra, as she ran seven times between the mounts of Safa and Marwa, in the hot, arid landscape of Makkah, to find water for her infant son, until Allah intervened and the Zam Zam spring emerged. We are reminded, “God does not burden any soul with more than it can bear” and “with hardship comes ease.”

Nature itself teaches patience and endurance in the sequence of seasons, waiting for crops to grow, renewal after natural disasters, even the time it takes for a child to reach adulthood. The phrases, inspired by images of nature, “It’s darkest before the dawn” and “Every cloud has a silver lining”, are frequently used to comfort the distressed.

As William Shakespeare says“
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

Durriya Kazi is a Karachi-based artist.

She may be reached at durriyakazi1918@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 7th, 2022