Hammers, Nails, and Persistent People

To be honest, persistent people are tiresome.

They hammer on one nail for years, decades, looking up only to lecture the rest of us on how we lack fortitude, commitment, willingness to wash our hair shirts in cold water and put them back on while still wet.

Truly persistent people are single-minded, preoccupied with their target all the time. They breathe their focus, spreading their hot breath over all the rest of us, reminding us to flee when they come near. And so, I find them boring and to be avoided. I like flitters a lot better. “Oh, what are you doing now? Oh! That’s different.”

***

The old man at the public hearing came in pulling a suitcase on wheels. He unzipped the suitcase, pulling out a handful of manila folders stuffed with papers.

“This is my fourteenth public hearing about this,” he muttered, barely looking up to look at me. The papers fluttered to the floor, most of them covered in yellow highlighting. He obviously had been at this a long time.

“I’m persistent, if nothing else,” he said to nobody in particular. He said it like being persistent was a virtue. To me, it looked burdensome and unhappy.

I went to sit next to a woman knitting a scarf while she listened to people speak. She nodded at the man with the papers and said to me, “He comes every time and gets mad because they won’t do what he wants. Don’t bother with him.”

***

I am not persistent, in case that isn’t already clear.

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Photo by Fausto Marqués on Unsplash