"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe -
The times when I'm willing to keep on keeping on are usually the moments when it's time for me to let go, and the other times when I'm all too willing to give up because it's too hard are the moments when I need to instill every ounce of fortitude I have and keep on.
I have a better sense of the difference between those times and am better able to stay grounded in what needs to be done than bulldozing through what needs to be let go of.
When I practice yoga, I am constantly bombarded with the "give up" feeling. I know this of myself, and I remind myself to be willing to forge ahead. When those moments come of wanting to give up and give in, I hold on for another moment longer and then I release. Then I know I attempted progress instead of stalling out. Then I know I will hold the asana longer the next day, because I wasn't so quick to give up today.
When I sit to write, I am once again surrounded with the voices of my mind that tell me not to write. These voices are persistent, telling me of all the other things I need to be doing or that I'm not in the mood to write or I don't have time; they come up with all kinds of excuses on why I shouldn't fulfill what my soul craves. I sit anyway. I write anyway. Each day I write I gain experience and confidence in honoring what my heart needs.
Then there are those times where the hardest thing for me to do is to let go, to step away, and it usually deals with other people and what they're doing. I want to interject my opinion or my way or my experience. I want to lessen another's load by telling them how to live their life. When I need those voices in my head to convince me to stop, they're not there, which seems funny to me.
These moments are when I have to reassess why I'm charged to keep on with what needs to be let go of. What do I get out of trying to run someone else's life? Well, for me, it comes back to the distraction of it, from my own life. If I'm trying to live yours, I don't have to take responsibility for my own. I don't just do this with individual persons. I can do it with the government, the grocery store, the way people drive, the weather--pretty much anything.
Of course, this doesn't mean I can't be passionate about things and have opinions, because I can. And I do. The clarification that is important for me is whether or not those passions, to the extreme I'm feeling them, are a detriment to my life. For example, if I'm so consumed with other drivers that I'm stressed and cussing and in road rage, maybe it's a passion not worth having.
As a dear friend of mine says, "A person who is truly confident in themselves doesn't need to judge others."
Mind my own business and have some business to mind. Eventually, the "tide will turn" and I will be where I need to be, in my own life, cultivating my own self-worth and self-confidence.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote over thirty books. The one she's best known for is Uncle Tom's Cabin, about anti-slavery. I remember reading Uncle Tom's Cabin when I was young. There were moments I cried, wishing I could change the past so that slavery had never been in our country.
Stowe was born in Litchfield, CT on June 14, 1811 and left this world on July 1, 1896.
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