I hope you Upstate North Dakota folks are happy, you ordered so much bitterly cold weather that the state couldn’t hold it all and some spilled over into South Dakota. Yes, I know, only -10 degrees rolled across the border, compared to the -30 you kept for your own enjoyment, but at a certain point cold is just cold.

Yes, I also know that as soon as you read that you blurted out, “-30…without the wind.” Without the wind…yeah right. As a former paperboy, making my way north along King Street from the Stevens’s to our house, my scrawny frame seemed to always be leaned into a north wind.

A wind that was often enough to make an alter boy cuss like his mother. Obscenities screamed into the cold abyss, stifled and muffled by the snot-crusted facemask and pummeled by the wind, would flutter helplessly upon the toes of my shuffling moon boots. Confession for such obscenities was never deemed necessary, they and the purveyor had suffered enough. So it goes.

Once the papers had been delivered, and I had unsaddled myself from that odd and torturous front-back Minot Daily newspaper delivery bag, I would happily head out into that same bitter cold and wind to dig snow forts with my friends for as long as the bread sacks in our moon boots managed to keep our feet warm.

A body and mind at play is much more willing to endure the elements than the same body and mind at work. What one considers “play” and “work” is somewhat subjective, and dependent upon the interests and motivations of the individual. Play can be work, work can be play, it’s all relative to the quality of the match between the activity and the individual.

David Epstein, the author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, recently spoke about this match quality and how it relates to what we often refer to as “grit” in individuals. Epstein stated that, “Often what we see as grit, is actually fit.”

That is, if what the person is doing, either at work or at play, is a good fit for them it’s not grit that keeps them doing it, it’s the fact that they enjoy it. Whatever “it” is, is a good fit for them for whatever reason. Epstein explains that “grit is a state, not a trait”, which I find encouraging, as an individual’s state is much more malleable than an individual’s traits.

We’ve all tried to force square pegs into round holes, literally and figuratively, at various times in our lives. Of course, if the round hole is big enough a square peg will fit, but never without gaps of varying degrees leaving a bit of space unfilled or a bit of life unfulfilled.

Dedication, hard work, sacrifice, willpower, stick-to-it-iveness…grit…appear much more readily and in greater supply when our efforts are directed at something that is a good fit for us. They still appear when our efforts are leaned into a cold north wind, but the spurs (and language) we employ to move forward in such circumstances are a bit more pointed.