BRANDEN

Reasons to Give Up
Copywrite © 2004 Branden Davis

Alright, there are probably hundreds, thousands, or even millions of good reasons to give up on the world, life etc... What I intend to do is discuss them, one at a time.

Reason to give up #6

Number 5 took a while to make it from idea to word form. I'd like to share why it took so long as a way of illustrating my point:

In the spirit of giving up, I recently gave up drinking alcohol. This little exercise in futility lasted about a month. I realized though, that with sobriety came new things such as motivation, ambition, sex-drive, and even coordination. Before I knew it, I was working hard and being noticed at work. I went to the gym. I bought nice clothes. People came to expect things from me. Words like "reliable" and "dependable" were used to describe me. So, by giving up drinking I found myself TRYING to do a lot of other things. Trying seems to be in direct conflict with giving up. So I realized: We must give up carefully. One wrong step and WHAM! You're in an upward spiral of achievement!

You may have already guessed the solution to this unexpected sojourn into the realm of the misguided worker drone: I gave up sobriety. When I gave up sobriety I found, by default, a lot of other complications went away. For example, I got to give up on my liver, my life beyond 55, my good looks, my work ethic, my love life, my hopes, my dreams, my soul... Basically a lot of very distracting things just vanished when I gave up on giving up on drinking. I am now settled back into my cozy little rut waiting for the hammer to fall and prove that there was never any point in trying to get anything worthwhile done anyway, because it will all go to hell in the end.

Let my mistake serve as a warning to all you quitters out there. We must never waiver in our commitment to giving up. A firm, unyielding adherence to our beliefs is required. To truly give up, you must persevere in the face of achievement and remember that sometimes you have to give up twice to get it right. Do the math, keep an eye on the prize, and ride this horse until it drops dead, friends. We're never going to get anywhere important anyway. You are doomed. I am doomed. We might as well just give up.