Diligence of Mind

I was 16 years old when I made up my mind to become a mechanical engineer professionally. With that goal before me, I studied advanced math and computer programming during my high school career.

When I started my university education, I was determined to earn a PhD in some sub-discipline of mechanical engineering.

I was involved in my university studies for almost 8 years. . .to earn a 4 year bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (ME for brevity).

I’ve consistently told myself that it was due to life happening that I didn’t earn the PhD.

I got married.
My wife graduated 2 years before I did and we decided to start having children.
While I was still in school, we decided to buy our home.
There was also a 2nd car.
My job at the time was paying me more than I could make as a starting ME.

The truth: I gave up because raising my family and making enough money to support them in the lifestyle we’d chosen was more important to me that getting the PhD. I didn’t have the diligence of mind to live in a little apartment with my wife and firstborn while I continued to pursue my formal education. It has taken me a long time to come to grips with that.

I’m okay with it. . .mostly. A couple of times over the last 20 years I’ve contemplated what might have been. How would our life have been different if I had pursued the degree and gotten a job somewhere working for an engineering firm working on robots (that’s what I wanted to do in school)?

Diligence is careful persistence and has root in the Latin verb diligere which means to “value or esteem highly” or “to love”. That’s fitting because real diligence requires valuing what you’re doing enough or for whom you are doing it to stick with it.

For example, you may not love your job¹, but you love providing for your family so you stick with that job to make sure they have a safe place to live and enough food to eat. Diligence is also what carries you through late nights of hard work and sacrifice to launch a side hustle or learn a new skill or earn a degree when life is still happening all around you.

Diligence is related to willpower. Both can (and often do) wane over time. Sticking with things, particularly these days, has become increasingly difficult. Setting very small goals and achieving them builds momentum which, as it turns out, are at least as important as diligence and willpower. Without those wins, it’s much easier to get discouraged, lose sight of the objective, and give up.

Not surprisingly, diligence of mind is also essential in lasting familial relationships. Like it or not, families are the primary underpinning of all civil societies. Perhaps more than at any other time in history there are forces at play that are undermining the family. I’m a believer in the force for good that is the traditional nuclear family, but also believe very strongly that any child raised in a home with two loving parents will fare better than a child raised in a single-parent environment. I also have deep respect for single parents who have the diligence of mind to raise children on their own. Hats off to them!

My wife and I have been blessed with five wonderful children. They are at the age now where the dynamic is shifting. Our eldest will leave home in just a few months to embark on a wonderful adventure; one that will require a great deal of diligence of mind on his part. Then, essentially two years apart, they will each embark on adventures of their own.

And now, 22 years later, I’m considering a return to formal education.

Here’s to the future and the diligence required to accomplish our goals!

Thanks for reading!

¹In these unusual times, there is both scarcity of employment as well as the opportunity to have the pick of jobs. It’s weird.