"If you had to choose..."

As a kid did you ever play that game where you'd asked each other "If you had to choose...."?  Usually it involved having to choose between two disgusting or painful options.  "Would you rather eat a worm or a cockroach?"  "Would you rather get kicked in the nuts or punched in the face?"  I guess it's not really a game.  It was really more of a way of determining each others  pain or disgust thresholds which someday you would use against them in a never ending quest to torment each other.  Ah youth!

Just the other day this little game popped into my head.  I have no idea why.  My mind usually races from one random thought to another.  But any ways the question came to mind, "Would I rather be considered a loser or a quitter?"  Hmm, an interesting choice.  I think the choice for me would be pretty easy but I wonder what others might pick for themselves.  I think some folks confuse the two options and I know many use them interchangeably when clearly they are not the same.

For me I would pick "Loser".  I know, there are a number of you out there that are saying, "Dude, you made that choice YEARS ago."  Yeah, whatever.  But to me loser implies you tried and failed to achieve something.  You took on a challenge, put your best foot forward, used all your personal resources to perform at your absolute best but you failed to achieve the goal you had set for yourself.  Winning and losing are a part of life.  We commit to something and it either goes our way or it doesn't.  What matters is that we did our absolute best, that we saw it through to the bitter end and we either celebrated our victory or sulked in our defeat.  But no matter what the outcome we stood in the ring and fought the good fight.

Now "Quitter" is another matter.  To me it implies someone who started something but CHOSE not to finish.  For some folks when things get too hard, when they encounter that first bit of resistance, when something or someone stands in their way they give up.  Now don't confuse quitting with failing.  The best way for me to distinguish between the two is that failing means you put everything on the line but failed to achieve your objective whereas with quitting you still have "gas in the tank" but choose not to go the distance.  Sometimes you have to admit that a relationship or a job has run it's course and you need to move on.  Accept that it didn't go as planned, that you put everything you had into it but it simply failed.  Beware of quitting, though.  Quitting is like a drug.  You do it once and eventually it becomes easier and easier to do.  After getting over that initial sting of shame, giving up on your dreams and ambitions becomes as easy as breathing.  And like a drug it gets to the point where you depend on it.  You'll eventually quit at nearly everything in
life - your job, your relationships, your faith, your integrity, the list goes on.  Don't ever give up on something when you know deep down inside you still have so much more to put out there.  Yeah I know, it takes a bit more courage and a willingness to endure a bit more pain but trust me that pain is nothing compared to the shame of just giving up.

So by all means call me a loser.  Let me fail at every endeavor and let me come in last in every race.  I will gladly embrace every loss as long as I don't have to live with being a quitter.