It's Okay To Give-up

Earlier today I was driving down the road, listening to a talk radio program. The woman who was being interviewed, a successful businesswoman, quoted Winston Churchill. Supposedly Winston said this short passage, "Never, never, never give up."

Winston's attitude annoys me. When I was much younger I never gave up. As a little kid I wanted to play professional basketball. I practiced all the time. I would go down to the local park and shoot baskets in the evening. It could be in the heat of the summer or during the cold of winter. Sometimes in Janurary it was so cold, I had to put about 50 pounds of pressure in the ball to make it bounce. A few years later I was still so mediocre that had I not given-up, I would have gone insane from the frustration.

One of the past winners of American Idol gleefully announced upon winning that her ultimate victory "was proof that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it".

My youngest sister, Jenny, wanted to play the violin professionally. She practiced all the time. After several years of spending hours on end practicing, a music instructor told both Jenny and my mother that my sister could continue the violin if she wanted, but she would never be any more than average. Jenny was informed that she "lacked talent". My sister's goal was to become a virtuoso. Being average was not going to cut it. She made the difficult decision and quit. Truth is, she should have quit years earlier.

It is my belief that if a person is really good at something, if a person really has exceptional talent in a given field, that talent begins to appear almost immediately. There are exceptions of course, but not many.

Winston Churchill always had an inside track at being politically successful. He came from a politically successful family. The American Idol winner was a teenage kid when she won. Exactly how much failure did she experience in those few years? Did she go through a decade of constant failure, as I did when I dreamed of a basketball career?

The reality is, sometimes giving up is far and away the smartest thing a person can do because practice does not make perfect. A person cannot be "anything they want to be" no matter how much determination they have.

Quitting or simply giving-up may not make for a good adage, but it sometimes does show simple wisdom.