Why Do We Keep Going?

People will at times ask us, “Why do you go on?” All we can very simply say is, “We have too much invested to quit now.”

The answer to this question is the same for every single person. We have so much more to lose than we have to gain by giving up. (There is an important disclaimer: some things in life we should give up, but these are not our God-blessed commitments and initiatives of growth, of which I’m now referring to—those things that other people rely positively on us for.)

Does this really apply to every single person?

The truth is, the fact that we’re here, that we’ve been conceived and brought to life; that we’ve been loved and educated—or even if we’ve been abused... the fact that we’re here at all... we all have too much invested to give up.

What Backs These ‘Investments’ of Ours?

The goal of humanity is to keep on going—we’re reliant on our purpose or purposes (whatever this is or they are) to drive us forward, ultimately toward eternity; yes, the physical death and then beyond. We don’t often think that we’re driving headlong toward death—our purposes driving us there.

But, there is something more central to this which is our present focus.

What more could it be that backs our investments than love?

And we’re talking myriad forms of love here: familial love, love of God, self-love, love of passion, our drives that push us on in love, the mysteries of love et cetera, and even things like love of achievement.

Too Far Gone

It is true that the further along the journey we are the harder it is to turn back. And this is good mostly (apart from situations related to the earlier disclaimer; for a good example, addiction—for these we’re blessed to turn back, but just in those ways).

Not only do we have so much invested, we’ve become very good at what we do. We even, at times, have leadership roles that say that the systems that contain us trust us enough that we’re now custodians of them.

The general fact is this is a good thing.

We have a certain inertia going and the passionate momentum we’ve built up keeps us going long into the dim times when there’d be variant excuses, disillusionments and discouragements to otherwise give up.

This is the human drive to go on, certainly beyond the scope of the next person who might’ve asked—even within their own minds—“Why do you go on?”

Other people’s drive and tenacity is at times a mystery to us; but it is personally vital to them. This shows us how personally vital God is to each of us. If it weren’t for God there’d be no fuel to drive our passion to go on.

And we simply must find ways to go on in this dance called ‘life’.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.