During one of my unknitting stretches today I got to pondering the concept of giving up. (I don’t know why, could have had something to do with one “experiment” that has caused me so much backward movement today). When is it that one decides to call quits on something? When do you say, Basta! (that’s Italian for enough – I’ve always liked that word)? When do you realize that it, whatever the it may be, is not worth sticking with? What psychology is behind such decisions? What personal experiences?. (It seems that I also go deep while I’m going backward.)
I thought back to the 3rd grade when I mistakenly joined the choir – I had no business being there and I certainly wasn’t enjoying myself. I told my parents after session number 2 that I’d had enough of the choir. “But you don’t want to be a quitter do you?” Hmmm…I had to think about that for a while. No, I definitely didn’t want that but, god did I loath Wednesdays when I had to go to choir practice. (why it was exactly that I didn’t want to be “a quitter” is a mystery…what did I know of quitting, I was 9?!) I stayed with it another month and then said Basta – call me a quitter, I don’t care. It’s got to be better than the choir. The choir director was probably secretly relieved.
With further stitch pulling out I got to thinking of all the things in my life since the 3rd grade that I quit, that I didn’t quit, that I didn’t quit but should have, of all the stuff I quit too late. (I won’t go into all this here…trust me, it’s better). I was trying to find some pattern to my decisions (and that could perhaps shed some light on my decision about this current knitting project).
I found none.
That’s when Adrianna popped into my head. Adrianna was a 4th grade student of mine a couple years ago. One day while I was listening to her read I interrupted to ask her if she was enjoying the book because she seemed to be missing her usual dramatic intonations while reading. She said, “No. I hate it. It’s boring. But I always finish a book I start because something good might happen at the end and I don’t want to miss it.” Hmmm…yes, I understand.
Thank you, Adrianna. Sometimes I too just want to see if anything good happens in the end. I think I’ll continue with it:
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