Excerpt from Giving Up

Michael Steeves, MA (Eng.) 06, is the author of the novel Giving Up (BookThug). He lives with his wife and child in Montreal and is development officer, Leadership, for Concordia’s Advancement and Alumni Relations.

Excerpt from Giving Up

The world is full of uplifting stories about extraordinary men and women who toiled away in obscurity for years and years, if not for their entire lives, before they were finally recognized, in some cases only in their afterlife, for achieving something great where so many others have failed. We constantly hear of how they stuck to their guns and defied all the odds when everyone was telling them to quit. It’s rare to go a full day without nodding along to an inspiring anecdote about someone who was able to shut out all those voices telling them that they weren’t good enough and that they were on the wrong path, so all they could hear was the little voice inside their head that told them they were destined for glory and that all they had to do was to stay the course. We might be sitting on a bus next to a couple of potheads, or in the lineup at a food court behind a gang of computer nerds, or maybe we bump into an old friend from high school, whatever the case is, we’re forced to listen to these people talk about a complete nobody who endured the pity and ridicule of their entire community, until later in life he or she revealed his or her true genius and, one assumes, experienced the sort of vindication that most of us don’t even dare dream of.

Considering how ubiquitous these stories are, you would think that we place a high value on unwavering strength and conviction, you would think that we admire people who keep trying despite countless punishing failures, but the truth is that we only admire these people in retrospect. If we actually come across one of these singular and heroic individuals who defy all criticism, who ignore their countless defeats, who carry on despite all the evidence that they should give up, then we are invariably disgusted by what we see. We think we can tell the difference between someone who has yet to succeed versus someone who is doomed to failure, but we can’t. It’s impossible to tell them apart, they both come off as desperate and slightly crazed, so we get it all wrong, or try to play it safe, by rejecting the true genius and celebrating the mediocre, the sure thing. We never discover these geniuses for ourselves, it’s always from someone else, which is why it takes years before we can finally recognize their accomplishments, and why many of these geniuses end up dying before word gets around. Whenever I hear about one of these great men or women who died before they could be recognized, I always wonder if they knew they were right and that everyone else was wrong. Had they discovered some sort of sign or evidence that proved, if only to themselves, that their destiny would be fulfilled? I’m particularly curious because I decided at a very young age that I was going to devote my life to accomplishing something extraordinary, but now I’m worried that I’ve made a huge mistake. Maybe I should give up.

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