From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: Palladios
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore encourages someone who is struggling in his spiritual life and considering giving up the disciplines he had previously committed to — urging perseverance on the grounds that the difficulty is temporary but the abandonment would be lasting.
The difficulty you are experiencing in maintaining the disciplines you have chosen is not a sign that you chose wrongly, Palladios. It is simply what difficulty feels like. The path that was easy from the beginning was probably not leading anywhere worth going.
Every person who has built something of lasting value — in the spiritual life, in learning, in any craft that requires sustained effort — has passed through the period of wanting to quit. The desire to quit is not distinctive information about you or your particular path. It is the common experience of everyone who is doing something genuinely demanding.
What is distinctive is what you do with the desire. Press through it, Palladios. The person you will be on the other side of the difficulty is someone you will be glad to have become.
Context:Isidore encourages someone who is struggling in his spiritual life and considering giving up the disciplines he had previously committed to — urging perseverance on the grounds that the difficulty is temporary but the abandonment would be lasting.
The difficulty you are experiencing in maintaining the disciplines you have chosen is not a sign that you chose wrongly, Palladios. It is simply what difficulty feels like. The path that was easy from the beginning was probably not leading anywhere worth going.
Every person who has built something of lasting value — in the spiritual life, in learning, in any craft that requires sustained effort — has passed through the period of wanting to quit. The desire to quit is not distinctive information about you or your particular path. It is the common experience of everyone who is doing something genuinely demanding.
What is distinctive is what you do with the desire. Press through it, Palladios. The person you will be on the other side of the difficulty is someone you will be glad to have become.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.