Is persistence a good thing? Usually. But it all depends on what you’re persisting.
My children, for example, can be very persistent. Which in many ways is great. But sometimes they can be so focused on what they’re asking for, that they fail to listen to what I‘m trying to tell them in response. Perhaps they want to play with a certain toy, or have a favorite snack. And so they ask. And sometimes my response isn’t yes or no, but rather instructions on what they need to do first before they get what they requested.
But instead of listening to what I actually said in response, they sometimes would just repeat the request. Over and over. (Ah, yes, persistence.) But in those situations, because they weren’t actually hearing what I was saying, their “persistence” got in the way, making it take just that much longer for them to get what they originally asked for.
Granted, they’re still young, and they’ve gotten better at this as they’ve grown. But I wonder how often we do the same things? Maybe not verbally making the same request over and over, but in being so focused, so persistent, in pursuing certain goals or outcomes, that we miss important feedback along the way, all because it didn’t fit with what we had envisioned?
There’s a difference between being persistent in learning, growing, and moving forward (even if it means changing direction), and in stubbornly sticking with the specific course we had planned. Because if the road is closed or it turns out to be a dead end, there’s no virtue in persisting down that path.