A dear friend is in a difficult life situation where there is almost no difference between fighting to the finish and giving up. A is nothing if not manically persistent about everything so not fighting is absolutely not an option. I have tried to offer counsel but it does not help. I believe there is a point of diminishing return in persistence that is not tethered firmly to reality and our ability to see it starkly. In difficult times it is not hard to get un-tethered and worse see if very differently than everyone else does. If from the outside looking in, our actions appear to be unhinged and that is the consensus opinion then maybe it is time to re-evaluate.
It is easy for me to say all this to A because I have lived through that phase of my life already - where I refused to see what was plainly evident to everyone else. I wanted a certain outcome and to achieve it, I was willing to re-organize the facts to arrive at the answer I wanted. I did finally arrive at the answer like I wanted to do, but it came at the cost of a decade of my life. Looking back, I am don't think it was a price worth paying. Enough time has passed for me to have recovered from those misguided decisions and life has offered it's redemptions. It turns out this experience cannot be lived by proxy. A needs to make the mistakes and learn it the hard way. These words of wisdom on when to give up will fall on deaf years until the time is right,
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