Turning Back

The steep brick street in front of our house gets slippery when it rains. Most cars have no problems with it but some can't make it up the hill. We hear them spinning and spinning their wheels. Why do these drivers continue to try to make it up this one particular street instead of turning around and going up one of the parallel streets (which are made of asphalt and thus are not slippery)? Eventually they have no alternative, but it sure seems like they persist up our slippery street for way too long.

I told the boys that in life it is important to know when to turn around and find a better street. To know when to quit. Our society gives quitting a stigma. Being a quitter is perceived as a bad thing. But what about the time wasted on dead-end streets? More people make the mistake of quitting too late rather than too early. To go back to the street analogy, I guess the challenge is to know when there are parallel roads that are better, and when all nearby roads have the same problem as ours - such as when there is traffic and one keeps searching for a road without traffic only to find more and more traffic. When you are stuck try to determine whether you are in the one slippery road of te neighborhood, or whether there is traffic everywhere and you are better of inching forward.

Don't be afraid to quit - at least not anymore afraid than to discover you are on a dead end street.