Quitting: A Pollinator’s Perspective

It started with ballet. I just wanted to stay home and watch cartoons. 

Then it was figure skating (too cold), followed by swimming (a mean instructor), soccer (I felt like an outcast) and Boy Scouts (well, I wasn’t a boy; moreover, the model car I entered in the Pinewood Derby was beyond embarrassing).

I would have quit volleyball (too much effort), but my coach, seeing all the potential in my long arms and Mennonite last name, refused to let me. He persuaded me to continue playing through college, but as soon as we lost contact, I quit that too. 

I quit writing a novel (a 50,000 word work of art that needed a lot more work). I quit not one, but two documentary projects (I couldn’t figure out where I was going with either). I quit consulting and climbing the corporate ladder.

I’ve started more jobs than the years I’ve been alive. Needless to say, I have quit every single one of them. 

So it may come as no surprise that I carried a lot of shame for being a quitter.

Finally, pollinators helped me see that ‘quitting’ isn’t the right word for what I have been doing my whole life.

Pollinators don’t quit on a flower, they carry on when they know the time is right. Pollinators don’t have a fear of commitment, they have an unwavering commitment to feed themselves. Pollinators aren’t afraid of discomfort, they venture out into the unknown every damn day. They don’t give up when they can’t find what they are looking for, they keep looking. If they give up, they die.

I’m not quitting, I’m foraging. This is living proof that, like a hummingbird or hawk moth carries pollen from one flower to the next, I carry a piece of every project I have started, every relationship I’ve been in, every endeavour I’ve tried, with me to the next.