Everyone who ever started anything hard has wanted to quit it.
What man hasn’t quit a diet, what woman a hated job?
What parent in exhaustion hasn’t fallen in front of the TV?
What artist hasn’t thrown the brush or tossed the palate aside?
What single, solitary, self-sucking, secluded soul hasn’t in beaten’s bitter hour wanted to give it all up?
Just as noon abandons morning and evening walks away from afternoon, so human kind has mastered the sun’s slow shuffle toward done.
And yet not.
Not walking off,
That’s something we also do.
We stand and take our fierce places inside of flint faces,
And our every step forward fires a steel-jacketed “No!” into the heart of our psyche’s impulse to quit.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 