Tag Archives: inspiration

Never Give Up

never_give_up_640_29I’d be surprised if anyone reading this has not experienced some point in their life when they felt like giving up on something. Maybe it was a relationship, a job, or a lifelong dream. Maybe it was trying to understand something, or help someone else understand. Maybe it was just trying to get your computer or phone to do what it’s supposed to do. We’ve all had times when it got too hard, too frustrating, too hurtful, or too impossible to keep going, and the only viable option seemed to be: give up.

Plow through the multitude of advice and self-help guides both on- and off-line and you can find innumerable references to make it easier for you to give up on things. Knowing when to quit – when to give up and walk away – has become a life-skill. There is merit in this: engaging in exercises of futility benefit no-one, least of all ourselves. If anything, they might cause far more harm or grief than abandoning them would. But how many things we pursue, or cling to, or believe in, are truly futile? How many just seem that way, because we lose hope, or faith, or motivation, or sight of our goal, or what set us in motion towards it in the first place?

The great African-American human rights advocate Frederick Douglass is often quoted as saying, “if there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Inherent in this statement is the concept of never giving up. In the remainder of the address this quote is taken from, Douglass effectively states that all things worth having require effort. More than this, there is no promise that our efforts will be rewarded with what it is we want, however without that effort we guarantee we will not have it. Within this ideal, futility is not the effort required to do something exceeding that which we are capable of, but rather our own fears, doubts, and insecurities overcoming our resolve to keep striving for what is important to us.

This is not to say that we should just persist with things no matter what. There are numerous situations where continuing to do something would be detrimental, even harmful, to yourself, or even to others. What makes the difference is your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the thing you are deciding whether to give up on or not.

If something has true value to you, if it has true meaning, or is truly important to you; if something has true significance to you, is something you truly believe in, or is a fundamental part of your life, or the life you want, then never give up on it. It is worth the effort it takes to have it, and hold on to it. It is worth the fight, the struggle, the pain, the heartache, and the sacrifice required to have it.

I know when the lights go out in the universe, I would rather bow out knowing I never gave up on the things that meant everything to me, than spend my final thoughts regretting those I did.