Garret Gillespie

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I’m flying down to my hometown, Phoenix, this weekend. I’ll be saying goodbye to my sister. At 53, her body is wasted by a lifelong battle with diabetes. Miraculous kidney transplants have carried her nearly a decade beyond her predicted life expectancy, but her strength is exhausted and she’s too weak to be on the list for another. She’s tired of the dialysis roller coaster, and ready to concede her battle to the disease brought on by a pancreas that couldn’t keep up. I’m awed by the fight she has waged, and I can’t fathom what she and her dear husband must be going through in making this decision. Soon her fight will come to an end and the disease will have won…or will it? She’s beaten the odds for her life expectancy; she’s touched countless numbers of lives for good; she’s been at death’s door more times than I can remember, each time fighting back to have a little more time with her husband and family. Many times and in many ways she has cowed this disease that has slowly deteriorated her body. For that I consider her victorious in the fight of her life.

And she leaves on her own terms…

How are you doing?

I was in a class recently and the teacher shared an experience that got me thinking. He described conversations he had engaged in with a couple of close friends.  During the course of the conversations, each of his friends shared that they were giving up on goals or commitments they had made to themselves or to others with the explanation that “they are just tired of fighting.”

They’re just tired of fighting.

Of course, they also could’ve said they’re just tired of growing; or climbing; or improving; or learning; or changing.

Sadly, few of us ever have the pleasure of knowing when our “fight” is going to be over. One of life’s most daunting mysteries is that the future remains unknown until we arrive. Our challenge is to keep fighting; learning; increasing, with no knowledge of how much time we’ll be given, or how long our fight will go on. Often, even the desired objective changes in the midst of the fight.

There’s a billboard along the highway near my home displaying an image of Abraham Lincoln, our 16^th President and one of the greatest leaders who has ever lived. Written beside his image are the words, “Failed, failed, failed, and then…” Do you think he ever got tired of fighting? According to John A. Sarkett, in Extraordinary Comebacks, and Darcy Andries, in The Secret of Success is Not a Secret, Abraham Lincoln could have decided he was tired of fighting after the death of his fiancée Ann Rutledge, or after his first or second dry goods store failed. He could have decided he was tired of fighting when he was defeated in his bids for Speaker of the House of Representatives, for the U.S. Senate, for Vice President, and again for the Senate. Instead, he chose to fight on. And how grateful we are that his “greatest concern (was) not whether (he had) failed, but whether (he became) content with (his) failure.”

Which failure do you think should have given him enough reason to be tired of fighting?

Almost a century later, on December 17^th, 1944 the U.S. Army’s 101^st Airborne Division joined the Battle of the Bulge arriving in the city of Bastogne ahead of German forces. The 101^st formed a perimeter around the city and withstood German artillery with minimal supplies and with many members of the division having been deployed so quickly they arrived without winter clothes. On the fifth day of the siege, the German artillery barrage paused and two German Officers delivered a letter from the German Commander, Generalleutnant Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, requesting the surrender of Bastogne. Acting commander, General Anthony McAuliffe’s single word response was “Nuts!” In the end the 101^st held Bastogne until reinforcements arrived never allowing it to fall into enemy hands.

At what point do you think they were tired of fighting?

Another half century later, during the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, the U.S. Olympic hockey team would come from behind in six of the seven games they would win on their way to the gold medal.

When do you think they should have given up the fight?

The problem with far too many of us is that we excuse ourselves before the fight is over.

Obviously, these examples are intended to inspire those ready to give up the fight, but my hope is that they are also a source of strength to those who want to fight on but whose hope may be flagging. What if you’re among those who’ve found the strength to claw your way forward a few more inches; a few more days; another step; you’ve dug deep to find the last dregs of hope hidden in your heart only to find another obstacle in your way. You have no interest in excusing yourself from the challenges before you, but you’re beginning to fear just how long these last vestiges of hope will hold out.

While the stories of those who eventually succeeded in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds appear to ask us to give more to the fight than we have to give, they also remind us that the fight isn’t over. And if the fight isn’t over, we’re not beaten. The fight goes on and there’s still time to turn the tables and overcome the obstacles that stand in our way. Study the lives of those who found the strength to fight; to grow; to learn; to stretch; to change.

We can explore untapped talents and skills. We can find the strength to accept our weaknesses and seek out those who can help us turn them into strengths. We have to develop the discipline to stop doing what we’ve done in order to stop getting we’ve gotten.

Thomas Edison believed “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Success is attainable and it’s closer than we realize.

This is the fight of your life.

It’s the fight for your life.

Failure…is not an option.

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