The Salvation Hustle

You reach a point in life when everything feels desperate. Losing weight will save you from dying in your bed at night from sleep apnea. Writing a publishable book or viral essay will save you from being both irrelevant and useless. Making a viral video will do the same. Embarking on a successful podcast will keep you mentally alive and “part of the conversation.” Starting your own restaurant featuring your grandmother’s brisket with gravy made from a secret family recipe will put you on the map and change what it means to enjoy good brisket. Become a yoga instructor and open your own studio to help people reinvent themselves in ways no one could have imagined. You’re special, dammit, and you’re going to prove it. You just need to work harder. So you must do this. You must do that. Make more sacrifices. Get on the true path. Never take your eyes off the prize.

But a voice breaks through your insanity and tells you that you’re on a fool’s errand. You’re trying to save your life. Deep down, you know you are losing it.

That same voice says: Let go. Surrender to the things you can’t control. Don’t live out other people’s fantasies of success. Don’t think fame and popularity will make you whole. Don’t confuse fame and popularity with love. It’s not love. It’s desperation.

So you retire your delusions. You realize that all the time and energy invested in your various mirages were killing you. You were making a bad investment. Take stock. Assess the damage. You become certain that it’s time to abandon your many chimeras and start from scratch. Use your time and energy on projects rooted in sanity, projects that might actually bear fruit.

The problem is, you don’t have a clue what these new projects will be. You’ve lived in a fever dream for years, perhaps decades. Where do you begin?

Such is the existential challenge presented in Lindsay Crouse’s The Case for Quitting: The Surprise Benefits of Opting Out. She observes that too many of us spend enormous amounts of desperate energy auditioning for the role of superstar—the venerated, successful person who sets records and raises the bar in whatever field we pursue, believing that this prized status will make us whole and happy. We create unrealistic expectations and often head down the wrong path. Then we become so exhausted from pursuing our dreams that we no longer have enough distance to assess whether those dreams are even viable.

Crouse uses the metaphor of a duck to describe this desperate period of her life: “gliding along on the surface while my legs churned furiously below.” That brief description perfectly captures the life of quiet desperation described by Henry David Thoreau. Always auditioning for some desirable role, we glide along on the surface while below our legs churn furiously in pursuit of some fruitless endeavor.

Crouse argues that we should take stock of all that furious churning and, when necessary, put an end to it. It’s called quitting. Contrary to society’s condemnation of “the quitter” as someone who lacks perseverance, the real character flaw may be the refusal to quit: cowardice. You need the courage to interrogate the results of your endeavors and ask whether those results merit perseverance. In some cases, quitting can be a good thing. Crouse offers an “alternative definition” of quitter from the Middle French: “to set free.”

All her life, Crouse confesses, she has been a high achiever, fiercely competitive, always pushing herself to the limit and loath to interrupt her path to glory. When an injury threatened her athletic training, she’d forego the doctor and take an Advil instead. Late-night runs were aided by GPS. When her grandmother died, she didn’t tell her team for fear that it would compromise their performance.

Looking back at the ways she pushed and punished herself, Crouse questions the wisdom of these often ruthless efforts. Her self-interrogation became serious after she had two children and realized she didn’t want to pass on her “darker types of perseverance” to them. Self-abuse is one thing. Teaching your children the habits of self-abuse crosses the line.

When the forces of ambition are no longer part of your flourishing but have become a dark pact with fear and desperation, it may be time to abandon ship. It may be time to move on.