You know what? I Quit

My Dad raised me never to be a quitter. “You won’t win if you quit,” he’d always say. The words infused into my bones; they spoke to me every time I faced something hard in life. I wore it like a badge of honor. I knew that no matter what life threw at me, I’d overcome it through hard work and determination.

With that strong work ethic, I had fantastic grades in high school. I decided to become an Architect and had my choice of universities to pick from. Architecture had its challenges, with late nights and stressful projects, but that mantra stuck with me, and I graduated with distinction. I struggled to find a job out of school because of an economic recession, but I could still hear his voice in my head. “Don’t give up! Don’t be a quitter.”

When I finally landed my dream job designing beautiful commercial buildings, I knew that it was my hard work that had done it. My success was because I wasn’t a quitter. And that never-quit attitude served me well. I rose the ranks in my career, my bosses always knowing I’d find a way to solve any problem.

Every week, I’d lead my staff meetings to make sure no one gave up. I had every saying you’ve ever heard in my tool belt. “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again,” was one of my mainstays.

The building department doesn’t want to give you a permit? Then let's find the loophole. Was the construction falling behind schedule because of staffing? Let’s reallocate resources. We just uncovered contaminated soil and have to stop digging?Let’s get the right team in and find a way to fix this problem.

They called me a problem solver. They called me strong. And they knew I would always find a way.

Then, things started to change in my life.

The COVID pandemic came along and disrupted construction. My staff would say things like ‘that light fixture we ordered is now backlogged for 6 months so we can’t open the building on time’. ‘Then let’s find another one!’ I’d tell them.

‘We can’t get crews in because there was a COVID outbreak,’ they’d say. ‘Then we will shift the schedule around’.

We adapted and shifted, but we never quit. The challenges got harder, but I always found a way.

Then one September evening, my mom called me up. She told me to sit down. “I have stage 4 lung cancer,” she said.

We cried together on the phone, hearts broken at the injustice of the world. Then she said, “But I’m going to fight this thing. I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to give up!”

We rallied our battle cries. I told her I’d be right there beside her, metaphorical sword in hand, as we fought the cancer. My sister and I were her strength and her courage as she went through treatments. When she got sepsis and landed in the ICU during treatment, we told her not to quit. When she wanted to stop treatment, we helped her find the strength to keep going. She fought and fought until one day she couldn’t fight anymore.

Nine months later, I sat next to her frail body, ravaged by cancer. I held her hand, tears welling in my eyes, and whispered into her ear. “It’s okay, Mom. You don’t have to keep fighting. Your body has crapped out on you.” I remember pausing here and then speaking from my heart of hearts. “It’s okay to let go. It’s time to become a butterfly.” She didn’t say anything, but she squeezed my hand. The next day, she left this Earth.

After that loss, I continued at that ‘dream job’, solving problems and fighting the good fight. With an uphill battle of labor shortages and inflation, the industry became more complex. Budgets were tight, schedules were tighter, and the clients couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get a BMW for the cost of a Ford.

I still had that idea in my head that had been ingrained in me as a child, but the words didn’t hold the same weight. A nagging voice had started to come into my head, ‘Why do you keep beating your head against the wall trying to make something work that just doesn’t want to work?’

That nagging voice became louder and more insistent. The small wins I made began to feel hollow. I was one small person going up against the entire dysfunctional capitalist system. The problem in my profession wasn’t me, my coworkers, or even my firm; it was that we were working within a rigged world. Supply and demand were causing inflation, low wages were creating labor shortages, and things weren’t working anymore.

I could keep fighting, I could keep pretending I could make a difference, and that my not quitting would change the situation, or I could do what I told my mom to do. I could Let Go.

So, you know what? I quit.

I pulled together enough savings to pay my bills and walked away.

And you know what happened after that? First, there were lots of ‘oh crap what have I done’ moments.Then, there was the excitement and flurry of activity as I worked to build a new career and life for myself.I started writing like I hadn’t since I was a child. I started dreaming like I hadn’t permitted myself to dream in ages. I had been so stuck in ‘not quitting’ that I had forgotten what ‘living’ actually felt like.

This is when I began my metamorphosis into a butterfly. It didn’t happen all at once, and maybe that story is still unfolding, the way a butterfly unfurls it’s wings.

But quitting opened up doors that would have never opened if I’d stayed. It showed me a new way of looking at the world. It showed me Flow.

Flow is that deep and steady rhythm of the universe. It is the river we are all riding on, just behind the scenes of our visible world.If we learn to ride in its current, we get to exactly where we are supposed to be with the minimal amount of energy.

I began to feel this flow and this rhythm in that blank space after quitting. It told me that life has cycles, just like the weather has seasons. Sometimes there is a time for growth, like the Spring, and sometimes there is a time for quiet, like the Winter. Sometimes the river is full of rapids, and we must fight hard, oars in the water, to keep the boat moving true. And sometimes, it is best to bring those oars in and surrender to the flow, trusting that the water will take us where we need to go.

That old story of never quitting ignored the flow. I realized that sometimes the walls came into my life because I had to learn and grow to overcome them. But sometimes the walls came into my life because they had been trying to tell me that wasn’t the path I was meant to go down. But I was like a bull in a china shop, and would fight, fight, fight no matter the situation or the consequences.

When I learned about the flow, I realized that there is a place for perseverance and there is a place for quitting.

And I learned to see the difference.

Life is not black and white. It is in full technicolor, with every shade and nuance.

There is a quote that many attribute to Albert Einstein, though he was never credited as saying it. While its origins are unknown, the wisdom holds. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’

Sometimes the best thing we can do is quit.

Because sometimes to quit is to win. It is the only path to change. And change is hard. That’s why I held onto this idea of not quitting. It gave me the illusion I was in control. That my perseverance and courage would move any mountain in my way. But it also kept me from changing into who I was meant to be. Not quitting was a subtle permission for me to keep going down the same path and doing the same thing over and over again because I didn’t want to change.

Personally, I hate change. I only change when the idea of not changing is worse than the idea of staying the same. And who can blame any of us for feeling that way? For a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly is no easy business. They have to die, guts transforming into goo and then reconfigured into a new shape. To quit is to embrace change, and change is painful.

But there is a freedom behind that change that makes it all worthwhile. To quit is to say yes to becoming a butterfly. To quit is to say yes to the flow, and to surrender to a world beyond our imagination. To quit can open a door to infinite possibility.