We might say that someone’s outfit or hairstyle is “on point,” but those style achievements pale in comparison with the strength and tenacity involved in a ballerina dancing on pointe. Perhaps “on pointe” could go in the urban dictionary as “working hard enough at something difficult to make it look easy.”
Where do you see yourself or others being “on pointe”?
That’s such an interesting approach to something I find very difficult. I guess you could say my English is “on fleek/on pointe” or something like that. You can’t tell how many years of hard work I’ve invested to get to this point of being de-facto bilingual. Actually, it feels so normal, so natural to me that I tend to forget that being fluent in any foreign language is an achievement. It’s hard to keep in mind that while many people speak English as a foreign language, not all of them are able to read books in English, and very few are able to translate English books or write novel-length stories in English. That is an accomplishment and I shouldn’t forget that.
As for other people… I think there’s always talent and most of all hard work and patience and persistence behind anything “on pointe”, no matter if it’s fashion or dancing or cooking or coding.
Some problems are overwhelming, and very possibly insurmountable. It’s a good thing that we generally don’t have to take on those problems by ourselves.
Who encourages you to persist?
Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
(Daily one-minute reflections and meditations: Daily Compass)