Week 1: "It's hard to beat a person who never gives up"
LJ IDOL PRESENTS: LITERARY PRIZE FIGHT
Week 1: “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up”
You’re Just…A Quitter!
Let’s just get it out there right now I’m sixty-three years old. That means I’ve been around for the introduction of the Beatles, the pill, the personal computer, and cell phones. I was born the same year as Steve Jobs, which is of no real consequence except that a) I just discovered this, and b) he was not a quitter. I, unfortunately, am.
Or at least that’s what I was told on a regular basis since I was a small child. And it has taken me almost sixty years to prove to myself that maybe I’m not.
I don’t remember the first time I was told I was a quitter, but I was young. My mother couched her condemnation with the words, “You’re just like me, you’re a quitter.”
She would say this every time I lost interest in something and wanted to move onto to something else. “Oh Murielle, you’re just like me, you’re a quitter.”
We’re not talking about important things like piano lessons. I never had them. Or sports. I never played any. Or even relationships. I was an introvert, I had one or two close friends throughout my childhood, but since we moved so often I never really had the opportunity to end a friendship, we’d move and I’d lose touch. That’s not quitting.
I did have dance lessons for a short while, and elocution lessons, for a bit longer, but both of these ended not because I lost interest, but because my mother couldn’t afford the first and we moved across the ocean while I was still learning to memorize poems designed to facilitate the correct pronunciation of plosive and fricative consonants. That’s not quitting either.
I expect the kinds of things I “quit” were hobby projects, and books I was reading that I lost interest in and while it is important for children to learn to finish the things they start—there was an entire educational system designed around that principal by Maria Montessori over a century ago—it’s not the end of the world if they don’t. And it doesn’t make them a quitter.
To be honest, I no longer remember what inspired my mother to label me such, but because of the deeply entrenched emotion and devotion to it, I suspect it was something from her own childhood. And here’s the crux of the matter: my mother wasn’t a quitter. No one could ever call her that!
Mom was a dreamer, but she was also a builder. In the late forties and early fifties she had her own private nursing company in Scotland and sent her employees out to the homes of the aristocracy, including the then Marchioness. In 1963 she founded a little girls club called The Little Helpers in our local area of Glasgow and garnered national attention for it. She accomplished many other things over the course of her life all demanding perseverance, not the character trait of a quitter. I mean she raised a daughter alone after my father died in a social environment that was hostile to single mothers regardless of the reason for them being single. My mother was not a quitter.
But she believed she was. And by the time I was a teenager I believed I was, too.
And that’s when I became a quitter.
During the years of junior high and high school I quit. I quit many times. It was never an academic issue. It was a social issue brought on by frequent illness/absences and boredom. Between the years of junior high and the second time I went to college I quit. I quit school, church, jobs, college…just about everything. I became a chronic quitter. I stopped believing I’d ever finish anything or be anyone, ever. And during this period, another label was added to my list: Loser.
But I wasn’t a total loser, because I didn’t stop trying.
I had long spells between the falling and the getting up again, but I did get up and I did try new things and eventually I started finding things I liked, that I was good at, that held my interest. And I developed the ability to commit to more than mere survival. I began to reach for things beyond my normal grasp and I was able to achieve them. And each success led me to another, and a stronger belief in myself and my ability to finish what I started.
Before I knew it, my core belief had changed. I no longer thought of myself as a quitter, even when I chose not to complete something I began. I realized the most important thing we can do is believe in ourselves and our abilities, only then can we achieve goals and build on our successes.
One of the most successful men in my lifetime was Steve Jobs, it boggles my mind everything he was able to create and build and develop. He was about ten years old when he encountered his first computer and twelve when he got his first job working with computers at Hewlett Packard. I wonder what he would have achieved had someone been calling him a quitter from the age of five.
If I could give a word of advice to every parent out there it would be, never call your child a quitter—ever. Let them try things, and give them permission, having tried, to stop doing things they really hate. Of course, you need to find out why they hate doing something, and you have to have agreements about activities that involve financial investments because that’s part of learning too, but children are supposed to try things, in fact, they’re supposed to be excited about trying things and to try as much as they can, that’s how they learn what they like, what they’re good at, what they can build into something wonderful. Who knows? Your baby might just be the next Steve Jobs.
Week 1: “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up”
You’re Just…A Quitter!
Let’s just get it out there right now I’m sixty-three years old. That means I’ve been around for the introduction of the Beatles, the pill, the personal computer, and cell phones. I was born the same year as Steve Jobs, which is of no real consequence except that a) I just discovered this, and b) he was not a quitter. I, unfortunately, am.
Or at least that’s what I was told on a regular basis since I was a small child. And it has taken me almost sixty years to prove to myself that maybe I’m not.
I don’t remember the first time I was told I was a quitter, but I was young. My mother couched her condemnation with the words, “You’re just like me, you’re a quitter.”
She would say this every time I lost interest in something and wanted to move onto to something else. “Oh Murielle, you’re just like me, you’re a quitter.”
We’re not talking about important things like piano lessons. I never had them. Or sports. I never played any. Or even relationships. I was an introvert, I had one or two close friends throughout my childhood, but since we moved so often I never really had the opportunity to end a friendship, we’d move and I’d lose touch. That’s not quitting.
I did have dance lessons for a short while, and elocution lessons, for a bit longer, but both of these ended not because I lost interest, but because my mother couldn’t afford the first and we moved across the ocean while I was still learning to memorize poems designed to facilitate the correct pronunciation of plosive and fricative consonants. That’s not quitting either.
I expect the kinds of things I “quit” were hobby projects, and books I was reading that I lost interest in and while it is important for children to learn to finish the things they start—there was an entire educational system designed around that principal by Maria Montessori over a century ago—it’s not the end of the world if they don’t. And it doesn’t make them a quitter.
To be honest, I no longer remember what inspired my mother to label me such, but because of the deeply entrenched emotion and devotion to it, I suspect it was something from her own childhood. And here’s the crux of the matter: my mother wasn’t a quitter. No one could ever call her that!
Mom was a dreamer, but she was also a builder. In the late forties and early fifties she had her own private nursing company in Scotland and sent her employees out to the homes of the aristocracy, including the then Marchioness. In 1963 she founded a little girls club called The Little Helpers in our local area of Glasgow and garnered national attention for it. She accomplished many other things over the course of her life all demanding perseverance, not the character trait of a quitter. I mean she raised a daughter alone after my father died in a social environment that was hostile to single mothers regardless of the reason for them being single. My mother was not a quitter.
But she believed she was. And by the time I was a teenager I believed I was, too.
And that’s when I became a quitter.
During the years of junior high and high school I quit. I quit many times. It was never an academic issue. It was a social issue brought on by frequent illness/absences and boredom. Between the years of junior high and the second time I went to college I quit. I quit school, church, jobs, college…just about everything. I became a chronic quitter. I stopped believing I’d ever finish anything or be anyone, ever. And during this period, another label was added to my list: Loser.
But I wasn’t a total loser, because I didn’t stop trying.
I had long spells between the falling and the getting up again, but I did get up and I did try new things and eventually I started finding things I liked, that I was good at, that held my interest. And I developed the ability to commit to more than mere survival. I began to reach for things beyond my normal grasp and I was able to achieve them. And each success led me to another, and a stronger belief in myself and my ability to finish what I started.
Before I knew it, my core belief had changed. I no longer thought of myself as a quitter, even when I chose not to complete something I began. I realized the most important thing we can do is believe in ourselves and our abilities, only then can we achieve goals and build on our successes.
One of the most successful men in my lifetime was Steve Jobs, it boggles my mind everything he was able to create and build and develop. He was about ten years old when he encountered his first computer and twelve when he got his first job working with computers at Hewlett Packard. I wonder what he would have achieved had someone been calling him a quitter from the age of five.
If I could give a word of advice to every parent out there it would be, never call your child a quitter—ever. Let them try things, and give them permission, having tried, to stop doing things they really hate. Of course, you need to find out why they hate doing something, and you have to have agreements about activities that involve financial investments because that’s part of learning too, but children are supposed to try things, in fact, they’re supposed to be excited about trying things and to try as much as they can, that’s how they learn what they like, what they’re good at, what they can build into something wonderful. Who knows? Your baby might just be the next Steve Jobs.