REFLECTIONS / LIFE
Never Give Up: Still Willing to Try
Listening again to Adam Cheng’s Never Give Up brings back Cold Blood Warm Heart, the television drama it accompanied. It also brings back a straightforward feeling I remember from songs like this.
If something was difficult, find a way through. If it did not go well this time, prepare and try again. Until it was over, there was probably still something worth doing.
I still like that energy. Experience has made me more aware of how difficult things can be, and how effort does not always lead to the result we hoped for.
Yet as the song plays, a familiar feeling returns.
There are things I would still like to try again.
I was born in the 1980s. Looking back on my own childhood, the idea of working toward more choices means a great deal to me.
Some things genuinely were not options then.
With limited resources, what I could do was work on what was in front of me: learn a little more, prepare a little better, and hope to be ready when an opportunity came.
I could not always see where that effort would lead. But doing nothing was unlikely to change much either.
So things accumulated, a little at a time.
Some skills came through study. Some judgment came from mistakes. Some confidence arrived only after completing something I had not been sure I could do.
Looking back, it was not always a tidy process. Progress could be slow. There were detours, and some efforts did not bring the results I wanted.
Still, after working through one thing, I usually had a better idea of how to begin the next.
That is part of what resilience means to me: being willing to deal with a problem, and looking for another approach when the first one fails. It also means being able to become interested in something again after disappointment, and finding the energy to give it proper attention.
When I think about resilience and the determination to keep going among people my age, I also think about the changes I have had to navigate myself.
Through school, work and becoming a parent, some paths I had expected to follow changed along the way.
Knowledge needed updating. Familiar methods needed revisiting. Things I had never encountered became things I needed to understand.
People born in the same decade have very different lives. But moving forward while having to learn again is a feeling I know well.
Sometimes it is frustrating. After all that time and effort, why am I starting over?
Then I realise I have not actually decided to stop.
There are still questions I want to understand and things I think could work better. A new possibility still catches my attention.
There is something energising about that determination. It can take us into unfamiliar territory, where we have to admit we do not yet know how something works, and begin learning.
After all these years, still being interested and willing to learn feels worth valuing.
Thinking about persistence and results brings Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea to mind.
An old fisherman goes to sea alone and, after a long struggle, catches an enormous marlin. On the journey home, sharks eat away at his hard-won catch.
What makes that turn painful is that he has accomplished something difficult, yet cannot preserve its result.
If we ask only what he finally brings home, it is easy to reach a verdict on the journey. But that seems to leave too much of what happened at sea out of the account.
I would not rush to call it a spiritual victory either. A loss remains a loss. Being told that at least we tried does not make something hard-earned any less painful to lose.
What the story makes me consider is how our response to an outcome shapes what happens next.
When something fails, we can look more closely. Some methods may be worth keeping. Some judgments may need correcting. Some conditions may have been beyond our control.
If all of that becomes a single conclusion—“I cannot do this”—we may rule out the next attempt before it begins.
My reading of The Old Man and the Sea leaves room for both effort and loss. We can be unhappy with an outcome and still decide what we want to do next.
So when I hear Never Give Up now, I still recognise that determination in myself.
I do not feel a particular need to give it a more polished name.
Sometimes I simply want to do something a little better.
A question I have not understood sends me looking for more material. An idea I have only thought about makes me want to write it down, or build something and see how it works. When it falls short, I want to revise it.
The process is not always smooth. But there is something satisfying about seeing a thing gradually take shape.
I have a better understanding now that some work takes several attempts. Sometimes I need to stop and find the cause of a problem. Sometimes I need another person’s view. Sometimes the original approach needs to change.
After an adjustment, the work can continue. A slower pace does not prevent that.
This is one way experience helps: it gives that determination more ways to work, and a better chance of lasting.
Becoming a parent adds something to how I look back. Things that were not options in my childhood are now possibilities my child and I can discuss. I value that change.
I hope my child will be willing to look for a way through difficulty, while knowing it is possible to ask for help, learn again or choose a different path. My own experience has made me appreciate what having more choices can mean. Where I can, I want to leave room for my child to discover what they want to pursue.
The song still moves me. Alongside the urge to press ahead, I now think about what it takes to keep doing something over time.
It takes learning and adjustment. It takes our own effort, and support from other people too.
Some outcomes bring happiness. Others remain disappointing. With time, perhaps we become more familiar with having both in our lives.
There are still things I want to do and learn, and people I want to spend time with.
Sometimes, listening to this song, I feel I have not changed quite as much as I thought. I still care about doing things well. A difficult problem still makes me look for an approach. Knowing something will be hard does not quite remove the wish to try.
After all these years, that determination is still there.
I hope I keep that feeling: the willingness to begin, to put something of myself into the work, and to look forward to what comes next.