Give It Up

I was going through some old bookmarks today, as I often do, to try to clean up some clutter. One that I came across was a post written by a friend of mine talking about some lessons to be learned from, of all things, the movie The Matrix. He talks about the fact that Agent Smith, once he has been "killed" by Neo, has the opportunity to "reset" himself, so to speak, since he has been unplugged from the matrix, and use this to become something different. However, since he has invested so much time and effort into what he's done, he refuses to give in and continues to chase Neo. The powerful lesson to be learned is, what things do you currently do that you do simply because you have always done them? What about those things that you do because you have invested so much into them that you feel you must keep doing them to completion? This doesn't mean you should simply drop things because you may not see the fruits of your labor. Seeing things through, even in the absence of a tangible reward can still be very useful. But at the same time, we only have a finite amount of time and resources available to us. And in order to best use this time and these resources, we have to decide which things it may be time to get rid of. I think we sometimes tie our self-worth and happiness simply to the completion of the tasks, with little regard for the actual benefit of their completion. And like I said, this isn't always a bad thing. But sometimes, we continue with something simply because it's easier than ending it and starting anew. But eventually you do have to decide what is really worth it, and what is better off dead.