The Value of Dropping the Ball

He was miserable.

At five years old, completely uninterested in basketball, wishing instead he could be doing origami or climbing trees or building things in the backyard with friends, he was miserable. Only half a decade into life, and he was already completely disenchanted. And, he wanted to quit.

Looking back, his mom (Hello. Let me introduce myself. I’m his mom.) and her Protestant work ethic responded the only way she knew how.

“Emersons don’t quit,” I told him. “You started the season, so now you have to finish it.”

“Ohhhhh…” he said through teary eyes. “WHY can’t I be a Jackson??!?”

But the truth is, he didn’t start the season. Not really. He didn’t ask to play basketball on the church league. His dad ran the program, and it was what our family did on Saturday morning whether our two boys were playing or not. So, they may as well have fun in a “voluntold” sort of way. Right?

Ugh. Wrong. Maybe. Heck, I don’t know. But now he was ready to defect to another family, one that might allow him to drop the ball, literally. (BTW, I talked with my Jackson friend, and she informed me Jacksons didn’t quit, either.)

The community and the connection and the popcorn and Saturday mornings with friends was fun. But I had a kid who laid on the floor when others were kneeling for pictures and stood at one end of the court looking at the basket while all the other kids were at the other end jostling for the ball.

After a decade of listening to the buzz on “work-life balance” and a season of restoration from not keeping it during the pandemic (the group meeting for former workaholics and recovering perfectionists will be on the Lido Deck at 3:00), I’ve begun questioning the Protestant values and work ethic with which I was raised, wondering where I parse out the treasure from the toxic, and gleaning the value in quitting.

So, when I received Jacob Morgan’s The Future of Work column this morning in my inbox, I had to pause, think of my former five-year-old, and ponder the title of today’s article, “Why It’s Ok to Quit.”

“As a society, we tend to have the idea that if you start something, you need to see it through, regardless of the cost to your physical, emotional, financial, or mental health,” he writes. Wow—that’s almost exactly what I told my son 14 years ago on a tear-filled Saturday morning before heading to the basketball court. Heck, it’s what I told myself not so long ago when faced with an uncomfortable set of tasks myself (Loyal-to-a-Fault, Party of One, your table is ready on the Lido Deck…). But, Morgan writes, sometimes quitting is the best thing you can do.

“Quitting isn’t about abandoning things when they get hard. Don’t quit a job because you are bored, want more money, or find the work too challenging. Those problems can be solved.

But if there are bigger picture issues that can’t be resolved, such as a toxic culture, a lack of growth opportunities, or not feeling fulfilled at work, quitting may be the best option.”

In his 2018 book, Dying for a Paycheck, Jeffery Pfeffer agrees.

“In one survey, 61 percent of employees said that workplace stress had made them sick and 7 percent said they had actually been hospitalized. Job stress costs US employers more than $300 billion annually and may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year. In China, 1 million people a year may be dying from overwork. People are literally dying for a paycheck. And it needs to stop.”

Are preschool basketball and an executive suite the same thing?

No. Not at all.

But, then again, maybe.

They are linked because it is in those formative interactions that our brains are formed and spirits shaped and our beliefs about good, life, others and our role in the world emerge. What if I had taught my son to choose wisely before getting involved with something, work with diligence and joy, and, when health and happiness were harmed, to quit well? What if I had modeled for him (and for myself) that valuing personal and relational health was more important than outside influences, even if it means eating popcorn on the sidelines on Saturday morning while your brother and friends bounce a ball under the gymnasium lights? Or, gasp, choosing not to go on Saturday morning at all, and instead stay home in jammies making origami then building things with the neighbor kids in the backyard?

“Try your best and work hard. But if that doesn’t work, know that it is ok to walk away,” Morgan writes. “Perhaps quitting will be the best decision you can make.”

To quote Michelangelo, one of my favorite artists and a creative badass who left projects he didn’t want to work on unfinished upon his oppressor’s death (another story for another day), “I am still learning.”

Still learning alongside you (and my oragami-loving son),

Rebecca