Hold On

Here is one of John's most raw and honest moments on record. "Hold On" opens his Plastic Ono Band album with a fierce, stripped-down encouragement directed at himself, at Yoko, and at anyone who happened to be listening. The production is almost startlingly bare: just John's voice, a guitar, and an urgency that feels less like a performance and more like someone gripping a rope in dark water. Hold on. Just hold on.

Overcoming the moments when we feel most like giving up rarely requires a brilliant strategy. Sometimes it simply requires not stopping. John was in the middle of a profound and painful personal unraveling when he wrote this track. His relationship with his first son, his marriage, his identity as a Beatle, and his understanding of himself were all being torn down and rebuilt simultaneously. In that landscape, the most honest advice he could offer was also the most essential: endure.

Lasting through difficulty is not glamorous. We live in a culture that celebrates triumph but rarely honors the long, unglamorous stretch of simply continuing when continuing is the hardest possible thing. John's song does not offer comfort that looks like a clean resolution. It offers something more realistic and perhaps more valuable: the companionship of someone who is also holding on, and who knows how much that costs.

Distance from the original pain is often what it takes to recognize how much strength the holding-on required. Looking back, the times we most doubted our ability to continue are often the very times that built the most enduring parts of our character. John's post-Beatles journey was painful in ways that were publicly visible, but "Hold On" is evidence that he found, in the depths of that difficulty, something worth saying to the rest of the world.

Today, I will recognize that simply continuing through a difficult period is a genuine act of courage, and I will extend that same recognition to someone else who is quietly persisting.

What difficult season in your life required you to simply hold on when holding on felt impossible? What did that perseverance teach you about your own strength?