30 Life Lessons for Inspiration and Creativity: Day 16

Lesson 16: Quitting is not an option

I looked at my dad through tears, asking through my facial expression why do I have to go through the agony of piano lessons when I don’t like the piano anymore. My parents loved the enthusiasm I had when my sister started piano lesson and I demanded to be enrolled as well. That enthusiasm quickly died in me, and then in parents, when I found out the practice hours I need to put in, my dislike for slow Bach pieces and the piano teacher who worked to clock out. My dad in his ever-patient way, looked at the bony kid with tears in her eyes, and told me that he simply did not want me to learn to quit.

The piano until this day holds a very special part in my heart. Every time I sit down and stumble through some tunes, I’m grateful for the lesson that dad taught me, the lesson that built my character like no other. Quitting is not an option. This lesson held me through those tough times when I almost didn’t graduate, because somebody just may have done too many study abroad semesters . . . through those hard times when I had to start over from scratch in my life, in my business, in creating a new vision to follow.

There’s a famous quote by Thomas Edison that goes like this, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” I wholeheartedly believe this and that quitting is not an option!