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To the Protege: Quitting, Optional


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Photo Credit: http://www.djibnet.com/photo/troop/royal-marine-recruits-rope-climbing-at-ctcrm-5453812724.html

We all have "Quit Points."

It's somewhat known in my circles that I was once a U.S. Marine Drill Instructor. (That's right, the kind that dons the Smokey the Bear hat, no eyes or humor and trouser creases that could produce cuts if touched the wrong way.) I recall standing at the bottom of a rope, with an officer candidate in training. The rope snaked nearly 40 feet above us, between us. He hung at four feet high on one side, and I stood unblinking at eye-height on the other. In this awkward stalemate, he had somehow gotten two words stuck in his throat, repeating them over and over as his best reply to my "encouragement" concerning his destiny which lay at the top of that rope.

His words: "I can't."

Granted, this moose of a man was allowed to enlist in the boot camp phase of Marine Corps basic officer trainings with a body weight that seemed to stretch the outer limits of what was legally allowable. And the fact that he had already run two miles with me running alongside him, offering him tailor-made inspirational verbal enticements might have brought us to the place we were at that moment of face off. And granted, his restricted diet of rabbit food and broth might have been causing mild degrees of confusion and sniveling for this large-boned soul on that day.

But, I hadn't been eating rabbit food and broth. I had been eating guys like him for breakfast and lunch for the two years in this job. And I had five other words stuck in my throat.

My words: "You can, and you WILL!"

You see, he had reached his Quit Point.

But, I hadn't reached mine.

What's a Quit Point? It's that point, where you believe, you have nothing left to give. The wall is too high. The cost is too much. The distance is too far. The sacrifice is too precious. The pain is too intense. And rather than go forward, stopping, or in some cases… even turning back become real options. Quitting is a very understandable option. It is reasonable. In fact, it's reasonableness, it's ability to talk to you when there is no one else around for miles is it's superpower. All of us can think of a time where we were faced with the decision to go forward, or to go home. ("Home," here, is not necessarily where we reside, but it's the picture of our most luxuruous comfort zone.) Cleaving to our comfort zone while it offers certainty and security, rest and relief, may offer us something more. Quitting may offer us a new way of thinking about ourselves. We may quit. We may quit our jobs. We may quit the team. We make quit the relationship. We may quit investing. We may quit building. We may quit dreaming. We may quit asking. We may quit trying. We may quit trusting. We may quit saving. We may quit exercising. We may quit believing. We may quit journeying. We may just quit. Yes, quitting may may offer us something more: a defining moment in our character.

In fact, people who slide Into the habit of quitting can go down in their own private histories and memories, and that of others, as "quitters." As unfair as that may sound to our ears, especially when those who labor less seem so insensitive and unforgiving of all the circumstances which informed our stopping or turning back, to them, it's tallied up under one big unforgivingly categorical, hard-to-deny label "quitter."

Of course, not all quitting is bad. We should quit some things... Recognizing our limits is a natural expression of humility, a recognition of our finitude in this world, recognizing when a plan is poorly designed, recognizing you are in someone else's fight, someone who is gladly sitting back as a spectator as you do the work that they should be doing.

The problem with quitting is this: quitting is merely an option.

Just as we may quit all of those other things listed above, we may also quit quitting.

Back to the fella who I left you hanging with earlier.

So, there he hung. There I stood.

Then I said: "What if you borrow my confidence in you? What if you accept someone else's view, someone else's words for once? You are not the first to look up at an insurmountable problem, one you have never encountered, never mastered. It's familiar. What's not familiar to you is that I have seen bigger men, wth less upper body strength and less to lose than you borrow my confidence and complete this physical task. If you are going to be a lieutenant in my Marine Corps, this is the moment you focus on the lives of 38 young privates and lance corporals, teenagers mostly, who need to know that the men and women who are going to lead them into and out of danger have more than , "I can't." I'm asking you to go up that rope. Now."

Sweating. Grunting. Sighing.

One finger peeled away followed by four others as his arm reached upward as far as he could reach. Then, came the grip. Then came the light in the eyes. Then came my gift...my reward...the slightest glimpse of a smile (just the corner of the lip, only). "DIs" can't be found smiling, except sadistically. But, this was a rare occasion.

That man climbed that rope. He climbed down with a steady controlled pace. He stood at the position of attention before me as he got his bearings again back on the ground. "Sergeant Instructor, Sergeant West...Permission to catch up with the platoon, to finish the morning run!?"

"Lets do it," my reply. Straggler, yes. The last man to the showers that morning by almost 30 minutes. Yet, he was never the same. 9 weeks later, that candidate graduated as a gold-bar second lieutenant, having come through our hallowed halls as a breathless 280-lb-heart-attack-in-the-making, this man crossed the finish line with the bronze physique of a Roman god, the confidence of a career athlete and the humility of someone who had met the self within and liked the company of that self over the company of the self which seldom partnered with his best self.

He had quit quitting.

Proteges, one day you're going to want to quit. That power-draining impulse will suggest itself to you as a good short cut, a better idea, a well-considered plan. Quit it. Put the thought on notice. Interrogate it if you must. But in the end, let the suggested quit point interrogate you.

It just may be that on the other side of your quit points, just above or beneath them maybe, there is a better self awaiting partnership which you can and must become.

Check in with your mentor about your quit points. Together, make a plan to be more than you have ever been.

Quitting, is an option.

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