My belief is that no matter the situation, no matter where we are in life, we should never stop trying. When a door is closed, you knock. And you keep knocking, and knocking, and knocking, until someone on the other side finally opens it. That's how goals are reached.
I'm convinced that if the door never opens, the problem isn't the door, and it isn't the person behind it. The problem is us. We stopped knocking. Either we didn't truly want to reach that goal, which is its own kind of failure, or we got tired and gave up. And that's dangerous.
Dangerous because first, we fail to reach our own goals. And second, we discourage others from pursuing theirs. That kind of behavior is socially toxic.
The key, though, is understanding that persistence doesn't mean blind repetition. Knocking smarter matters as much as knocking longer. Sometimes it means changing how you knock, learning why the door is closed, or building the strength to keep showing up when there's no immediate response. Persistence is a skill, not just stamina. When we treat it that way, we don't just chase goals, we grow into the kind of people who can actually sustain success when the door finally opens.