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Never, Ever, Give Up and Quit

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Three times in my life I have faced life threatening circumstances. In one experience I had the left front wheel of the car I was driving come off while I was going more than eighty miles per hour on I-94. I was in my early twenties and had a temporary job car hiking. I would deliver a car from one dealership to another and then get to the next car however I could. After hitchhiking up to Milwaukee, I picked up a very old car and was bringing it back to a Chicago dealer. It was a rainy day and I was just taking it easy on my way back, driving along in the middle lane, when up ahead a car merged onto the highway causing a semi truck to move over into my lane. So I went into the left lane and sped up to go around both of them. Maybe 150 yards or so ahead of the truck I suddenly heard this loud “whumph” and looked up to see the wheel rolling on down the highway. Now the first impulse when something threatening happens while driving is to hit the brakes. You may want to remember, if it should ever happen to you, that hitting the brakes in that situation is not the right thing to do.

     Perhaps because I started meditating at such a young age, or perhaps from past lives, or perhaps just some genetic predisposition, when real trouble comes up I tend to get calm. I can become quite agitated when trouble threatens, but when the wolf is really at the door I’m a good person to have around. So as I realized I’d lost my left front wheel, this calm settled over me and time seemed to slow down. I tentatively hit the brakes and learned very quickly that it was a mistake. It caused the car to veer sharply to the left and the left front of the car hit the guard rail. I think that because I came off the brakes as fast as I did, instead of flipping up into the oncoming traffic, the left rear also slammed into the guard rail. The car then bounced off the guard rail and began to slide on the wet highway across all three lanes. As I slid into the far right lane I was aware of the semi truck going around me on the left and brought the car to a stop on the shoulder facing the right direction as if I still had all four wheels under me. I suffered one small bruise on the outside of my left leg.

     Sitting behind the wheel laughing and prying my fingers off of it, I saw the truck driver running up to the car with eyes as big as saucers. As he got to me, he said incredulously, “Are you alright?” I stopped laughing long enough to say “Yes, I think so,” and he said, “Man, I thought you were a dead —,” well you can imagine. He said, “When you hit that guard rail, I thought for sure you were going into the oncoming lanes, but you came off the brakes and slid across the lanes, and I just missed you and I’ve never seen anything like it.” Now, many, perhaps most people would have just jammed on the brakes, thrown their arms up over their faces and died. I tell this story not brag, but to tell people, never let go of the wheel. Never give up. Never surrender to the worst except in those rare occasions where that might be the right thing to do.

     We stand today at a critical turning point in U.S. history. The oligarchic plutocracy with its well funded foot soldiers of movement conservatism has managed to undo most of FDR’s New Deal. Social Security narrowly survived, but wealth and power are once again concentrated in the hands of the one percent of our population, the richest of the rich, like at no time since before the Great Depression. A virtual coup has happened, and now, when the effectiveness of movement conservatism has run its course and is running out of steam, when we’re in the last days of an administration that represented the plutocracy like no other before it and the great middle of the electorate has had enough and is swinging back towards the left, many people are slamming into the guard rail. Many people see the end of America as we know it and expect an outright coup with martial law and reeducation camps looming. While all this is possible, I believe it is unlikely, especially if we hang on to the wheel and don’t give in to pessimism and despair.

     This happens all the time to people, businesses, organizations and yes, even super powers. At the individual level, wheels come off of cars, terminal diagnoses are given, businesses face seemingly certain bankruptcies, organizations lose their leaders or leases. Now, it’s true that sometimes healing does not mean surviving. Sometimes the old must give way to the new. It happens that what seems a disaster turns out to be a blessing in disguise. But in all cases, we are better off hanging on to the wheel and fighting to the end. Spontaneous remissions occur. Last minute deals save businesses. Countries and societies regain sanity. It can happen, but rarely when we have given up hope, and rarer still when we’ve stopped trying.

     Whatever challenges you face in life, from the global level down to the most intimately personal, never ever just give up and quit. Hang on to the wheel and you just might bring things to rest on the shoulder.

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