KNOWING WHEN TO STOP
Rehab is for quitters
My brother gave me a shirt with that slogan on it many years ago. It always got a lot of laughs… and I’m using it now to catch your attention, even though I do not agree with one of its implied messages.
The shirt was part of his softball team’s uniform, and one message was that many of the players might have been candidates for alcohol abuse rehabilitation… which probably was true. The other was that quitting is a sign of weakness… which they thought justified the heavy drinking sessions that followed the games, but that’s the message I want to question today.
Okay, when it comes to competitive sports, it’s not a good idea to give up, but life isn’t always a game and quitting isn’t always a bad thing. And since several of the players on Ernie’s team were volunteer firemen, it’s easy to imagine how one of those booze-ups could have gone horribly wrong.
But even if the partying never hindered an emergency response, binge drinking and other forms of drug abuse are bad for our health and good examples of times when making the decision to quit can be seen as a sign of strength.
One reason I’m writing about this today is that my daughter has recently found a job teaching English at a language school in Central America where the native language is Spanish. Before she signed her contract and flew off to Costa Rica, she was assured by the school director she would be given support settling in and that her salary would easily cover the cost of living.
Those things have not turned out to be true, so now I’m wondering if maybe she should cut her losses. The problem is she has invested quite a bit of time and money qualifying to be a teacher and she was really looking forward to living and working in the country and becoming comfortable with Spanish.
The other reason I’m writing about this is that I do not think she is alone. Many jobs require university degrees or other extensive training before the people who are going to do them get the chance to find out if they like the work, and unfortunately, recruiting promises are often broken.
That happened to me at my first job after university. I was hired to write and read newscasts at a local radio station in Pennsylvania in the United States and I was also promised I would get a shot at some play-by-play commentary for local football games.
I did, in fact, get to cover one game, but I also got collared with a daily discjockey shift where I played records and read adverts live on-air. That may sound like a nice number to many of you, but the advertising really disturbed me and it damaged my credibility as a newsman… and if I’d known about it before I started, I would not have taken the job. Never-the-less, it took more than a year for me to find the strength to leave.
And that’s my point. Even when it’s the right thing to do, quitting can be very difficult, and people who know when to do it, deserve credit.