Despite all the talk about quiet quitting (a problem I ascribe to a lack of leadership, and not a lack of engagement, and a blog for another day) —and the great resignation -- adults are actually pretty bad at knowing when it’s time to be done with something.

It’s hard to hold the polarity between persistence and transition. The ability to stick with something through the hard times—and then the ability to, as Mary Oliver says in her poem, In Black Water Woods, when the time comes to let it go. The problem is that rather than seeing persistence and transition as interconnected energetic capacities that support learning and growth—these traits get turned into moral behaviors—where you are good if you persist, and bad if you transition—and this fear of a moral failing keeps way too many people stuck doing things that they need to move on from. Turning these capacities into moral behaviors makes it seem like you should do one and avoid the other. As if you should seek a singular state of persistence when in fact persistence and transition are polarities—you can’t grow without both of them—and the task is to be able to hold both ends of this polarity, and feel the loss when you move from one end to the other.

As a therapist and a coach I especially see this struggle when people are done with a current job –not because of any other reason than they have outgrown it—from a developmental perspective, or their values or purpose has changed, or their awareness of what now interests them has shifted. And their real struggle is a nagging feeling that they are ‘giving up’ rather than growing up. The job no longer fits them—and they can’t bring their biggest self, their gifts, their energy to the current one anymore.

The ability to be done with something allows you to grow into something else. Children and teenagers are not only allowed to this; they are outright encouraged to ‘leave those things behind.’ You don’t stay in 3rd grade forever, just because you liked it, or you liked your teachers. You move to the next grade. The structures of youth support us being done and moving and transitioning to the next thing—and then we hit adulthood and the easy conveyor belt of transition ends. And we are required to make these shifts on our own.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against constancy, or loyalty, or commitment. I am not against staying connected to work or relationships through difficulty. I’m not saying being done is ‘good’ and persistence is ‘bad.’ I am asking us to hold both of them enough to support our growth and our ability to use our gifts.

The problem with persistence, transition and done is that you find these places as feelings, as images, as quiet voices or drumbeats. They are places that you usually can’t get to with reason. The next thing pulls you toward it and you don’t give up, you persist. Or you suddenly have a sense deep inside you that the thing you are doing right now must stop. And the problem is that the feelings might not ‘make sense.’ They aren’t the logical answer. And often, you fear that they might disappoint somebody else.

I know this dilemma intimately. Ten years ago I gave up my private practice as a therapist because I needed a break from being so connected to other people’s emotions and thoughts. I was exhausted-- I had been taking care of people since I was a toddler, and I could feel, in my cells, that I wasn’t going to be able to heal myself unless I let go of healing others for a while. It was a wrenching realization, and ultimately, a crucial shift for me. A shift that came with a good deal of sorrow that remains. And that’s the hard thing about this polarity between persistence and transition, between persistence and done—there’s a loss, or grief, or sorrow at the parting. And there’s joy, excitement, hope and interest in what comes next—all things you might have missed if you hadn’t risked the grief, hadn’t risk the disappointment.

The nudge here isn’t to persist or to be done. The nudge here is to reflect. To listen to that small voice inside you tell you what it needs now. To trust the images and visions your unconscious offers you. To allow yourself to listen to what your body is telling you. And to hold that neither side is permanent. You can let yourself persist, you can let yourself be done. They are both okay.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Poem Inspired by The God Abandons Antony by Cavafy in: