Belief requires proof; faith abides in perfect contentment. This is the nature of thing I tell myself each day when I bring myself around to this nightly excursion. I started writing these essays to prove to myself that I am capable of writing; I continue them daily to prove that the capability isn’t a fluke, luck, or accident. One sees more and more of the insides of oneself, not the contents but worse, their ligatures, the movement of electricity along them in motion. One begins to have ungenerous thoughts about one’s own interiority.
Etymonline has it the word “effort” enters into the lexicon in the late 15th c. It comes down through French from the Vulgar Latin exfortiare, meaning “to show strength,” this word a contraction of ex (“out”) and fortis (“strong”)— roughly, “strength going out.” One expends effort and counts (in the matter of things that feel finite while in possession or use, like money) that this effort will be replenished in the fashion of energy, that is, cyclically, with some notion of preservation.
The root “effort” derives from, fortis, means also “mighty; firm, steadfast; brave.” It comes from Old Latin forctus, which, though it’s source allegedly unknown, is thought to come from two possible Proto Indo European roots: *bhergh- meaning “high, elevated,” or possibly *dher-,1 meaning “to hold firmly, support.” Alexander Hislop holds that Semiramis, origin of the mystery cult, was styled as “the woman who made encompassing walls,” the goddess of the first city to build fortifications, that is, Babylon; and all subsequent pagan goddesses represented with tower-crowns (Rhea, Cybele, Diana, &c.) of the same lineage.
For the neurotic, effort is frequently expended in an attempt to control the future. This type of intervention, like “manifestation,” is impossible; one can only control the incoming moment’s action, which continually recurs, and accumulates gently, and becomes, over long time, the past. One can really only be said to have control over the past, and that in the type of revisionist history favored by the unlucky, or the thwarted, or the inward-turning, or the baffled.
This second PIE root also being the root of the name of the goddess Durga.