About Your Place and Giving Up

Post 187:

            When is it okay to give up? Is there a sound from heaven? Maybe a mighty thunderclap or some other sign or wonder? No, for most people on most journeys, there is nothing as dramatic as all that.

            That’s all this is. Everything. One form of journey or another and the decision to go on or to abandon all hope.

            Is it wisdom to say that quitting is never a good idea? It couldn’t be. Certainly there exists a set of circumstances where letting go is the right thing to do. It most definitely won’t feel heroic to raise the white flag, but that subordination of pride might be the unheralded stuff of heroes. Just maybe.

            I’d like to believe that pressing on in most scenarios is the way to go. Then again, I’m a romantic, and one of the most cursed kind. I’ve seen defeat on fronts too many to count, yet I still cling to hope that there is a hill that once crested shows me a valley of peace, a valley that is my place.

            Pretty sappy. It probably springs from reading one too many books. There’s always a low point in any good book. The spot where any reasonable person would give up and turn around, go home, try something else. The nadir is where the decision must be made, and the harder the journey has been, the more heart it takes to keep going. Think of any heroic feat of discovery. The grand adventurers all hit a point where one more day was probably a sentence they couldn’t even utter. They just shut their mouths and kept on.

            And then land is sighted. A man starts screaming wildly from the bird’s nest above and suddenly hope is restored that your dream can happen. More importantly, you can once again hope in hope.

            It might just be worth it to be a romantic. Don’t worry. It doesn’t mean you have to stop being a cynic. It’s still a free country.

            Cheers and happy trails. See you after.