The Day One Gives Up

By: Isaac Christopher Lubogo

There is a strange funeral that happens long before the grave is dug. It is not accompanied by mourners or dirges; it is silent, internal, and deadly. It is the day a man or woman gives up on trying and retrying. That day, though the body still breathes, the soul begins to suffocate.

Life is not killed by disease or accident first—it is killed by resignation. The moment you conclude, “I have tried enough; I can try no more,” you are not merely pausing—you are lowering yourself into a coffin made of despair.

Wisdom of the Ages

Winston Churchill once thundered: “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” And Thomas Edison, after ten thousand attempts to give the world light, declared: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Marcus Aurelius, that stoic emperor, warned us: “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” And is not life itself the relentless rhythm of beginning again?

The Philosophy of Trying

Retrying is not foolish repetition—it is the courage to believe that tomorrow might yield a different harvest if one more seed is sown. Nietzsche reminded us: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Giving up is the day the why dies, and without it, the how no longer matters.

In African wisdom, the elders say: “Even the sun, after sinking into the night, rises again to conquer the morning.” Shall a man then be less resilient than the stars above him?

The Lubogo Verdict

Therefore, I say unto you: guard against that silent funeral. Guard against the day you stop trying. For the end of trying is the beginning of dying. The man who tries and fails is still more alive than the man who refuses to rise.

The fire of existence is not kept by those who never fall—it is kept by those who rise again and again, until even destiny itself surrenders.

Let this be our covenant: the day I stop trying will be the day I truly die. Until then, I live.