On Giving Up

They say the best way to learn to swim is to jump straight into the water. You thrash about to stay alive and you swim because you must. And so, all at once, you have learned.

So what is it in this method that teaches us to swim? Our attachment to life, of course. We are so bound to living that sometimes, using that bond alone, we discover abilities we never had. Just as Tarık bin Ziyad burned the ships so that his soldiers had no choice but to win, when we jump into the water to learn to swim our attachment to life drives us into great effort. Almost everything in life works this way. Every pain that does not kill you makes you stronger.

You will say: what has this to do with giving up? What I am describing is precisely an act of giving up. Call it the enclosed space, the safe space, or what the young now call the comfort zone. Leaving that space is a form of giving up.

You can tell whether you truly want something by looking at what you are able to give up for it. And if you can pay great prices, then you deserve the thing you want.

Now think about what you want from this life. Think of the things whose absence saddens you, makes you unhappy, spoils your mood right now. A better job? A better car? A lover who left? A language you never learned? What is it that makes you unhappy by its absence?

Now think again: what have you done for that wish? What did you give up? Your comfort, for instance? Your routine? Your rules, if that was required? What did you do to keep the lover who left, that you now weep over their leaving? How many hours a day did you set aside, that you grieve over never learning a language? How hard did you work for a better car, that its absence makes you anxious?

You see, you can reach anything you want in this life. You only need to know how to want the right thing and then do what it requires. Give up your comfort, your pleasure, your time, and if need be your peace and even your rules.

That is when you can have anything you wish for.

If you will not give up yourself for your dreams, your dreams will soon give up on you. Remember that.

Be well.