Confessions of a reformed perseverer

Commitment isn’t a virtue if the thing you’re committed to is bad

I used to get into trouble because I didn’t know when to quit things. I alieved that I ought to persist with any decision I took, every hobby I started, every plan or goal I committed to. Sometimes this meant that I wasted time doing things that no longer served me; other times, I did quit, but only after immense and unnecessary angst and inner turmoil.

• I had a gut reluctance to quit my PhD for many months, even when it was clear that I wasn’t enjoying it and I no longer wanted to go into academia

• I found it really hard to quit volunteering opportunities, even when I was miserable, felt like I wasn’t useful, or was a bad fit for the work

• I’ve stayed in romantic relationships longer than I should out of a desire to Make it Work

• I used to feel very anxious about ‘flaking’, ie, cancelling plans with friends, even if I felt ill or had some other strong excuse

We get a lot of cultural messages about the value of following through, sticking to plans, persistence, perseverance. We get fewer messages about the value of flexibility, or quitting things when they’re not working. Leaving academic courses of study is seen as ‘dropping out’. Marriage til-death-do-us-part is idealized, and relationships that end are framed as failed attempts to meet that goal, rather than valuable experiences in themselves. We have a negative term, ‘flakiness’, for someone who is too eager to drop commitments and obligations, but no converse term for someone who’s too keen to stick to commitments that are bad for them (and no word for the virtue of gauging when one should quit vs when one should stick at something). In personality quizzes measuring grit and conscientiousness, they ask questions like ‘I always finish things that I’ve started’, as if pig-headedly pursuing mistaken goals was a virtue.

Some of this is reasonable. Some good results do require long-lasting commitments. It’s easy to give up when the going gets tough, to be lazy, to value present ease over future benefit.

And I actually have loads of respect for the part of me that wants to follow through on commitments! They’re heroic and agentic, gritty and stubborn. They want to achieve what they’ve set their mind to do. Going through life with (some of) that kind of determination isn’t a bad thing.

But I’ve realised that it’s also ok to change course: even to change course a lot, if you’re in a time of flux or transition. We’re growing all the time, and our ideas about what’s right for us constantly change. Past Amber wasn’t dumb or wrong when she thought it was a good idea to volunteer, or start a PhD, or stay connected to certain people or agree to go to that party. But sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expected. Since Burns Night is around the corner, a stanza from Robert Burns’ ‘To a Mouse’:

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

Gang aft agley,

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,

For promis’d joy!