On Almost Giving Up

I’ve been doing a lot of virtual events recently where I share my story of taking on the Supreme Court. I’m almost always asked variations of the same question: “Have you ever thought about giving up?”

Of course I have. Many times.

In fact, I’ve written about a few of those occasions in my memoir and have publicly shared some of those stories during interviews or TEDx events. But lately, I’ve been thinking about the different connotations to the phrase, “give up.”

We often association “giving up,” with a bad thing, like failure, except in the cases of bad habits like smoking or chewing on nails. When that happens, giving up is a good thing. In those cases, we’re dropping excess - we are getting rid of something negative that is holding us back. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that we are letting go. When you let go of something, you have more capacity to hold onto the good. It is healthy to let go of toxic relationships and destructive patterns. I like “letting go” because it is a more intentional, decisive action.

But when I’m asked about giving up, people are referring to the other kind - the bad kind: surrendering to loss, to abandon something meaningful that is meaningful. What if we phrased it: instead of “not giving up,” we can depict how people “hold on” (also an intentional, decisive action). When we look at how people overcome adversity and or the act of persistence, it’s really because they are anchored in hope, compassion, and optimism.

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States. Instead of thinking about “giving up” our values when it comes to the limited (and often faulty) representation that we have available, maybe we should thinking about holding on instead. Tomorrow, we hold onto the idea that our voices matter - even if, and especially if, we find ourselves in the minority of a democracy. We will hold onto the idea that voting is an act of generosity because we can choose to vote in a way that dignifies and honors our neighbors. We hold onto this idea that every act of compassion, voting included, can help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice a little more.

So let go of cynicism and hold onto justice.