Never Give Up

by Daniel Diner

“Due to my dad's diligence and unwillingness to give up, he gets to keep doing the things he loves for longer.”

Last year, I joined the volleyball team for the first time. I had never played volleyball before, so I did not know what to expect. Would I like the sport? Would I like my team? Would I be any good? I did not know, but I greeted this challenge with open arms. The season started, and it turns out I was not necessarily a big fan of the sport. Combined with the fact that we still had not won a single game, you could say that I was not enjoying my time on this team. I told my friends about this and one of them suggested that I should quit. I was shocked to hear this because to me, the thought of quitting something that I had started but not yet completed was absolutely absurd. How could anyone in my situation just let the rest of the team down for their own wellbeing?

My whole life, I had been taking examples from my dad. To my dad, failure was never an option. Ever since I was little, he had been telling me stories about his childhood in which he started weightlifting, and despite the troubled circumstances that followed and which he had to come to America from the Ukraine to escape anti-Semitism, he never gave up. And now, whenever I go into my parents' room, I can see the plaques that his perseverance had earned him standing on his shelf.

Another example of my dad's resilience, that I got a firsthand view of, was a day that my dad hurt his knee. He had to get surgery for it. Before the surgery, my dad and I had always played soccer together, but after the surgery, this did not change. Despite being in his fifties, the idea of quitting soccer after surgery was never an option for him. Throughout his recovery process, he stayed strong, and now I can happily say that to this day, every Saturday morning and Wednesday night, me and my dad play pick up with other people at South Sunset Soccer Fields near my house. Due to my dad's diligence and unwillingness to give up, he gets to keep doing the things he loves for longer. To me, this is a great example of why during volleyball season last year, when giving up seemed like the best option, I took what I had learned from my dad and used it. I did not quit the team. I did not take the easy way out. Instead, I decided to continue to try to help my team to our first victory. Unfortunately, this victory never came, and we ended our season without winning a single game. But I can say that I enjoyed the second half of the season a lot more than the first. Thanks to my dad's influence, quitting was not an option. So I made the most out of the situation, and because of the positive end to the season last year, I might even play on the team again this year.