If you were guaranteed that trying one more time would change the outcome, would you do it? Would you put up with 100 rejections to accept the 101st success? Would you get beaten down emotionally 100 times for the triumph of standing tall on the 101st?
Some people say that it is an easy, yes. I don’t know if those people have tried losing time after time, after time without a reason given. Being told your dream is wrong, or that you aren’t allowed to achieve it is hard. It’s painful. It’s a kick to the stomach and a crushing of the soul every time. When you have put your best foot forward and you have striven with everything you have, and the world tells you that your best is not good enough.
Try that one hundred times and tell me how easy it will be to make it to the 101st.
Life is not like that. It isn’t even that hopeful. Life doesn’t guarantee us anything. Life doesn’t promise that we will win if we just keep trying. Life promises only more opportunity, nothing else.
So why keep getting up? Why is our society so filled with inspirational quotes to the effect?
“Winners are losers who got up one more time.”
“It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
“It’s impossible, means it is impossible for them, not for you.”
Why do we cling to these? Is it foolishness? Childlike hope in the face of facts? I don’t think so.
I think it’s about your exit interview.
The last evaluation you will give to yourself. When you are on your deathbed, or near enough, will you look back and see a life of striving? Will you see that you gave it your all, and maybe you missed, or will you look back and say, “I stopped.” I quit just before the unseen apex of the hill. I decided it was too much pain, too hard and I quit right before I would have succeeded.
Did you collapse to the cloud of lies we tell ourselves, regret things and say “I could have been…”
Maybe you would have found the road to your success on door 20. Maybe door 50. Maybe it wouldn’t have taken you to door 101, but you stopped at door 10.
Why?
Life hurts anyway. Life and people are going to tell you "No," and tell you that you can’t and that you won’t. Get up anyway. The only thing that is going to make the long distance run of life, the long-distance hardship of existence, worth the effort is that you strive. You might never win the way you wanted. The honor is in the effort. The victory is in the attempt. The exit interview is sealed in the determination.
One more time.
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