Fortuitous fortitude.

Facing critiques and challenges.

It’s a well-established fact that I adore alliteration (see Overthinking overreading, my reflections on the disillusionment of dreary doldrum days, and the title of this newsletter in itself), have fun with wordplay (see also, Allowed aloud and The weight of waiting), and don’t mind a rhyme or two or three (as in, Healing & dealing & unabashedly freewheeling). But my creative writing has been critiqued in the past for sounding good but meaning nothing; in other words, my poetry specifically had rhythm and flow but lacked depth and specificity. It came up empty.

I don’t necessarily, totally agree. I do find fulfillment in the feel, the flow, the vibes alone, but I also welcome the challenge to go further for depth and specificity.

I’m thinking about this because over the weekend when I was out on the trails for my long run, a phrase got stuck in my head: fortuitous fortitude. I’ve learned that this phenomenon isn’t necessarily a common occurrence for others, but for me it happens quite frequently. Rather than an earworm of the lyrics or beats to a nineties pop ballad, I get words that bounce around on repeat.

In one sense, this phrase became a mantra: fortuitous fortitude, fortuitous fortitude, left foot, right foot, over and over again.

But it also became an attempt to remember via repetition. Although I wasn’t sure quite when or why these words came to mind, I wanted to hold onto them (but didn’t want to stop my forward momentum to pause and clumsily fumble, to type them into my phone), so I mentally chanted them and maybe even once or twice aloud as I reached my steepest inclines and needed that motivation to carry me uphill and onto the next stretch of the journey.

Fortuitous fortitude.

When I reached the car twelve miles later (okay okay, 11.93 but only because those are two of my favorite numbers and mileage is an arbitrary hoax) and had a chance to capture those words in my notes app (right beneath a reminder-to-self to “Listen to more Jock Hams” lol), I had to ask myself, so what do those words and what does this phrase really mean?

To the OED I go.

fortuitous (adj): That happens or is produced by fortune or chance; accidental, casual. From the Latin fortuῑtus, forte by chance, fors chance.

fortitude (n): 1) Physical or structural strength, or 2) Moral strength or courage. Now only in passive sense: Unyielding courage in the endurance of pain or adversity. From the French fortitude and the Latin fortitūdo, fortis strong.

So in other alliterating words, serendipitous strength? Finding power and bravery in times of need in unexpected ways? Embodying the courage that was there all along?

As I mentioned in my post from earlier this week, I am currently working my way through Julia Campbell’s The Artist’s Way. And while continuing to reflect on these words throughout the week, I remembered one of her essay’s themes on synchronicity as a beautiful and intimidating thing:

“Answered prayers are scary. They imply responsibility. You asked for it. Now that you’ve got it, what are you going to do?”

She discusses how we have called this feeling different things at different times, whether serendipity or synchronicity, “a fortuitous intermeshing of events,” moments when things seem to finally align (not unlike the sun and moon), which, I agree, is scary. When you’re so used to working and going and fighting and striving, then suddenly a sense of reward, of rightness, and maybe even a brief bit of release or relief? It’s unsettling territory, no doubt.

But it’s beautiful nonetheless.

The fortuitous fortitude I found on the trails last week was physical in that moment—it was the strength in my quads I’ve been building all along to push me upward and forward when needed—but it is also most certainly a mentality I am cultivating to carry out in my writing, teaching, and etcetera-ing too.

It’s okay to feel afraid when things seem almost too good to be true, but it also okay, and important, to bask in the bliss of making it through.