“We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."

So after a week of feeling inferior to Really Young Stuart after his brilliant post on happiness I've decided that it's time for a comeback.  I'm sure that in comparison, the following will seem pretty inferior, but I'm a big believer in not giving up on things, so I'm not planning on being deemed the worse writer without putting up a fight.  I'm a big fan of persistence.  If you believe in something, I don't think there's ever really a good reason to give up on it.  I just don't follow that line of thinking.  Obviously, there are certain situations, like when the dining hall isn't serving peppered flank steak, where you kind of have to give up and resort to being disappointed.  Other things, more important things, things that you're more passionate about, really shouldn't be disregarded, even when it seems like there's no more chance left.

Vince Lombardi smiles as he admires the killer booger he just picked out of the world's largest schnoz.

Vince Lombardi, recently named the Greatest Football Coach in the History of the All-Time World Forever and Ever by Letters to Pilky staff (narrowly edging Jon McLaughlin by one vote), once said “We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time."  I'm not really sure what the context was (although I'm assuming somebody had just asked him about losing a game), but in my opinion, this is one of the wisest philosophies ever produced.  Basically, this guy was just badass enough to say, "If I had enough time, I'm a good enough coach to have come back and beaten you.  Eventually I would have been able to prove that I'm the best.  You're just getting lucky right now."

I'm pretty positive that everybody has at least one issue that they believe in enough to say this about it.  Something that they are so passionate about that they refuse to let it die, refuse to let it go, refuse to listen to many logical arguments about why it won't work.  This may be stupid, but I admire it.

There's normally a standard amount of time to accomplish something, and whether or not it's official, it's generally accepted by society to be a certain way.  After this time period, people are generally supposed to give up.  Why?  I'm not really sure.  The people who refuse this time period, the end of the 4th quarter, as Coach Lombardi would say, generally turn into some of the most highly regarded by the same society that tried to tell them to stop.

Example: This guy

Aaaaaaaand him

Yep.  Him too.

Plus this guy

All of these guys took things that failed, that were supposed to not be able to happen, that other people said were impossible, and refused to accept it until they finally reached their goal.  To quote Chazz Michael Michaels, "They laughed at Louis Armstrong when he said he was gonna go to the moon. Now he's up there, laughing at them."  Seriously though.  Even though there's no better feeling than being able to do something that's "impossible," that's not really the reason that any of those people did the things that they did.  They were passionate about them, believed they were worth the effort, so they were able to refuse the idea that what they were doing had actually been previously thought to not be able to, well, you know, be done.

Things aren't over for you until you decide they are.  As long as you believe in something, there's probably a reason for it, and it's probably a pretty smart decision to pursue it.  Even if you fail, you're in the exact same position as you are without trying, and it's always better to try and fail than to never try at all.

Passion and hard work drive the world.  This is one thing that I don't think I can ever be talked out of.  People talk about "world-beaters" all the time, and the one thing that they have in common is that they have a strong passion for something and they're willing to work until they achieve it.  The two words that often precede "world-beater" are "focused" and "driven," and it's no coincidence that those are pretty synonymous with "people who refuse to accept 'no' for an answer."  The things that can be accomplished by this type of mentality are obviously hard, but hard things are often worth doing, even if you've been told that time has run out.