There is nothing romantic about it, but if there is one place that proves your tenacity, it is rock bottom.
When you're at the bottom, people will push you. Circumstances will test you. People will think you are weak and vulnerable, and some will try to take advantage of that. You can complain and be bothered by this, and you would be right. But rock bottom can also be a tenacity-fueled trampoline if you let it, because it is evidence. It is a unique opportunity where you can prove to yourself who you actually are when you have nothing to hide behind. And that proof is an extremely powerful tool for confidence whenever you need to remember who the f___ you are.
The heart part
The harder thing is keeping your heart intact through all of it. Tenacity can get you out of the bottom, but if you lost your heart along the way it is just survival. Life is about more than just surviving, it is about living. Love is often the bravest and most rewarding thing to do. You need your heart for that.
The real challenge is not letting the bottom make you cold, so you don't become like the people who pushed you when you were at the bottom. It's easy to let rock bottom teach you that everyone is simply out to use you. It's more valuable to not become the thing you had to defend yourself against.
That is the sabotage nobody talks about. You climb back up and somewhere along the way you start treating people like threats before they have done anything. You close off all the parts of you that made you worth knowing. You win but you win alone and you wonder why it feels like nothing.
There is nothing worse than a life where you get everything you could ever wish and more but you're left wondering if God gave it all to you to punish you.
The pawn and the queen
In chess a pawn can become a queen just by staying in the game long enough and moving forward one step at the time when possible, through everything, without going back.
But life is not chess and people are not chess pieces. However, institutional and strategic intelligence is a lot like chess, so it is worth playing a little chess sometimes if it allows you to protect your heart and your ability to genuinely connect with people and have more freedom. Knowing when to be careful, when to read a situation before you open up, when to hold something back until you know it is safe. That is just protecting the thing that makes connection possible in the first place. Being emotionally generous to people who are only being strategic with you is foolish.
Chess pieces do not have hearts. Humans do, and that makes life worth living. Life goes much deeper game than a game chess. You win it with the quiet tenacity of staying soft enough to actually bond while being grounded enough that nobody can take you out off the board entirely.
That is tenacity.