- Walking away is often treated as failure, yet sometimes it takes greater courage than staying.
- Annah Njuguna reflects on the difficult line between perseverance, stubbornness, faith and personal responsibility.
- She argues that wisdom lies in knowing what deserves another attempt and what must be released.
There is a strange shame attached to quitting.
We speak of it as though leaving is always a confession of defeat, as though the person who walks away must necessarily be the one who lacked courage. We praise endurance endlessly: keep going, press on, never give up; it will be worth it in the end.
And sometimes, it is. Sometimes the harvest is simply waiting for one more season of patience.
Thomas Edison is often remembered for the persistence behind the development of a practical incandescent light bulb. His story has become a monument to trying again when trying again feels unreasonable. The lesson is not that failure should be feared less because success is guaranteed. It is that some things are worth pursuing precisely because failure has not yet had the final word.
But there is another lesson we rarely discuss:
Not everything deserves our persistence.
There are battles that do not make us stronger; they merely make us tired.
There are doors we keep knocking on long after we should have realised that there is another entrance somewhere else.
There are chapters we continue rereading because we are afraid that turning the page means admitting that the story did not become what we imagined.
Perhaps knowing when to quit is an underrated form of wisdom.
Because there is a difference between perseverance and stubbornness. A difference between patience and fear. A difference between having faith and refusing to move.
Faith does not mean standing still
Faith, to me, has never meant sitting still and expecting heaven to do everything.
Faith says, trust God. Responsibility says, now get up. Pray, then move. Believe, then work. Ask for direction, then have the courage to take the road.
God gave humanity dominion from the genesis of life, but dominion was never a promise of a life without labour. We were given hands, minds, imagination and the ability to choose. We still have to soil our hands. We still have to build. We still have to fail. We still have to create opportunities where there appear to be none.
Sometimes, we even have to create our own luck. Not because God is absent, but because faith was never meant to become an excuse for passivity.
There is a kind of courage in trusting providence, and another kind in taking responsibility for the part that belongs to us. And perhaps that is where quitting becomes complicated.
Sometimes quitting is cowardice. Sometimes quitting is wisdom. Sometimes staying is bravery. Sometimes staying is simply fear wearing the costume of perseverance. The difficult part is knowing which is which.
Life has a way of placing little bars around us and convincing us that they are walls.
Comfort becomes a bar. Fear becomes a bar. Other people’s opinions become a bar. The familiar becomes a bar. And eventually we mistake the small space we have become accustomed to for the entire world.
But there is more beyond those bars. There is more beyond the horizon.
There are places we have not seen, people we have not met, ideas we have not imagined and versions of ourselves we have not yet become.
New chapters happen all the time. Sometimes they arrive because life forces them upon us. Sometimes we have to write them ourselves.
Sometimes beginning again is the courageous choice
I have come to think of life as a canvas.
Perhaps one of its greatest mercies is that, for a while, it gives us room to undo and redo. To erase. To repaint. To change the colour. To begin again. Before the paint dries. Before we become so attached to the picture that we forget we are the ones holding the brush.
So perhaps quitting does not always mean giving up.
Perhaps sometimes it means refusing to spend the rest of your life proving that a wrong decision was right. It means recognising that something has served its purpose and having the courage to release it. It means choosing an uncertain future over a familiar misery. It means turning the page without knowing what the next chapter says.
And yes, that can be terrifying.
But life often meets us at the level of our audacity. There are moments when the safest thing to do is also the thing that keeps us small.
So take the risk. Leave the room. Change the direction. Start again.
But do not mistake this for an invitation to abandon every difficult thing.
Some dreams require stubbornness. Some callings require years. Some doors open only after we have knocked long enough to make our knuckles sore. The trick is to know what you are fighting for.
Know what deserves another attempt
Do not quit because something is difficult. Quit when you have honestly recognised that the difficulty is no longer leading anywhere worth going. And when there is still a dream worth pursuing, remember Edison.
Try again. Try differently.
Try when the first attempt embarrasses you. Try when the second one fails. Try when nobody understands why you are still trying.
Because the opposite of quitting is not always success.
Sometimes it is simply the courage to begin again.
Perhaps that is the balance we need: know when to quit the thing that is destroying you. Know when to persist with the thing that is building you. Faith can give you the courage to move. But your feet still have to take the step.
So, good luck to those who try. Good luck to those who fail and try again. Good luck to those brave enough to walk away. Good luck to those courageous enough to begin anew.
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And good luck to those standing at the edge of a chapter they have outgrown.
Turn the page. There is still more story to tell.
By Annah Njuguna.
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