GAIL WHITE Giving up in the middle keeps us from reaching our goals

Last spring, my son participated in a community track meet. For some reason, we thought it fitting that he compete in the mile run. He started out like gang busters, running with the rest of the pack around the track. In the middle of the second lap, his gang was losing its busters.
On the third lap, the pack had broken away from him, and he looked like a wounded gazelle. As he ran past me, I cheered him on. His eyes were filled with pain. I could tell he wanted to quit. On the last lap, I was surprised that he ran a little faster. The pain had left his eyes as he focused with determination on the finish line. Once he crossed, he collapsed with a heavy-breathing smile. The pride on his face for finishing the race was unmistakable. When he received a bronze medal for his efforts, he was elated.
"I almost quit," he confessed in the car on the way home.
"I know," I said, watching him examine his medal. I wanted to give him a speech about how "quitters never win." I didn't need to. The medal said it all.
It's easy to quit in the middle.
When you start out doing something -- it doesn't matter what it is -- there is excitement and anticipation.
As you round that final bend toward completion of your goal, there is elation and celebration.
That place between the start and the finish can be very lonely and boring. It's easy to lose sight of the goal; forget why you even started in the first place. That's when it is easy to quit.
Determination
For every sport my children have played, at least one of them has wanted to quit midseason at one time or another.
Football practice became a huge point of contention between me and one of my sons one year. He would cry and moan before every practice. One day he cried all the way to the field. I decided this was enough and took him home.
We were sitting in the family room when Dad came home.
"What are you doing here?" he asked the boy.
The child looked at me!
"Get your equipment on," Pat said firmly. "We don't quit in the middle of the season."
Today, football is that child's favorite sport.
Dieters are famous for quitting in the middle. We start out with conviction and determination. The first 5 pounds come off easily and we feel like we're off and running. Somewhere between the starting gun and the finish line, a cheesecake gets in the way.
One pound creeps back on, then off again. Worse than that, somewhere in the middle of that diet, the scale stagnates.
As humans, we seem to be wired in such a way that moving forward excites us and moving backward makes us determined. But, for some reason, our souls simply cannot tolerate staying the same.
The middle is a lot of the same.
Toward the goal
What we fail to see, so many times, is the progress that is occurring during those times when it seems like nothing is progressing.
When my son goes to football practice day after day, he doesn't see how much better at the game he is becoming.
Though the scale shows the same weight, what it doesn't show is the changes going on inside, preparing the body's systems for different digestion.
The middle, boring and mundane as it can be, prepares us for the finish line.
My son cannot effectively tackle and block during the football game at the end of the week if he hasn't practiced those techniques all week long.
My body could never maintain a weight loss if I haven't developed good eating and exercising habits on the way to my goal.
The obvious problem with quitting in the middle is that you never reach the finish line.
The underlying problem with quitting when something becomes boring or no fun is that when those excuses are good enough for one goal, they can be recycled for any race.
Then the finish line is cluttered with "would haves, could haves and should haves" instead of medals.
But here's the real kicker. Most of life is the middle.
So, while you're sweating through that second lap or grabbing your side in pain on the third, you might as well just raise your arms in the air and turn a cartwheel.
gwhite@vindy.com