Patience and Fortitude

On either side of the imposing steps of the New York City Library on Fifth Avenue and 42^nd Street are two marble lions. The names of the lions, I recently learned from watching Jeopardy!, are Patience and Fortitude.

Those seem to be odd attributes for protectors of education, so I went to the library’s website. Their nicknames have changed over the decades. According to the library:

“First they were called Leo Astor and Leo Lenox, after The New York Public Library founders John Jacob Astor and James Lenox. Later, they were known as Lady Astor and Lord Lenox (even though they are both male lions). During the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities he felt New Yorkers would need to survive the economic depression. These names have stood the test of time: Patience still guards the south side of the Library's steps and Fortitude sits unwaveringly to the north.”

In our dining room we have a watercolor painting of the library by Ron Lent, a gifted New

Jersey-based artist who used to work for Donna’s family’s business. In our painting, only one guardian is visible. Is it Patience? Or Fortitude? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter.

Patience and Fortitude. Over the past week I went through the backlog of emails in my personal account. It would be an understatement to say I haven’t practiced sound computer storage hygiene. My emails dated back to 2009 and numbered more than 22,000.

Clearing out my inbox was a grueling task that I did in blocks of a few thousand emails at a sitting. I wanted to keep those that had special meaning to me, so I didn’t just do mass deletes. I would go through a page showing 50 emails and spend a few seconds scanning to see if any were worth saving. Most, of course, were not.

What was striking to me was the thousands and thousands of emails relating to my job searches through the years.

Over the past decade I had a run of being unemployed for long stretches of time. Dark times they were, for me and my family. My job-search experience was an exercise in patience and fortitude. I submitted hundreds of applications, went to dozens of interviews, came damned close several times to landing a job, only to be told, “We just decided to go in a different direction.” I took jobs selling cars and as a host at a friend’s restaurant to pay the bills and stay sane. Donna took a job that provided health benefits.

I was close to losing hope when I got an email out of the blue from a headhunter who had come across my LinkedIn page. He had a position for a communications manager at a large Baltimore-based competitive energy company. I went through what turned into a months-long hiring process, but two weeks before my father passed away, I started a new job.

It was a six-month contractor position, with no benefits, no paid time off, none of the perks that employees take for granted. I was able to see in, but I wasn’t allowed to be in. But it was a foot in the door.

That six-month contract got extended once, twice, and again. Finally, last November, after three years as a contractor, I was onboarded as a regular, full-time employee, with all the benefits I had been without for so many years.

It took more patience than is natural for me, and all the fortitude I could muster, to hang on, to keep my chin up, to stay focused on doing good work and staying positive. But it ultimately paid off.

The Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, are just starting. The Olympics – Winter or Summer – inspire me. The sacrifice and commitment of the athletes who are competing at the highest level, on the biggest stage, are worthy of admiration. 

Those athletes, and those who compete in the Paralympics and Special Olympics, are far more intimate with the concept of patience and fortitude than I will ever be.

So let’s tip our hats, or our glasses, to them, and wish them well.

Let the games begin!