by Jesse Cameron Alick, East Coast Editor

Quit. Give up. Relinquish. Refrain. Renounce. Fast.

Two months ago, after a particularly intense sci-fi themed costume party which my roommate and I hosted (have you ever sat in a melange filled Guild Navigator Tank for 5 minutes? It’s quite an experience!), I decided it was time to quit. Quit what? What have you got?! First I quit drinking, then shortly after I quit tobacco. Hard upon the heels of those two, fell red meat, followed quickly by chicken, and fish and other creatures of the sea. Raising the stakes to the moral level – I took a pledge to refrain from all dishonesty also. (Sidenote: I started dating this awesome dude at the beginning of January – then a month later I promptly quit drinking and smoking and basically doing all things fun – now I take him on dates where all I do is drink orange juice and eat spinach. He must think I’m totally rock and roll). There is a part of me that has a great need to “go without”. I feel weighed down – by my jobs, my habits, the company I keep, the emotions I pack up and carry up the hill, down the hill, up the hill again. Do you ever feel that way? If so, here are some thoughts and suggestions in case you’re considering lessening your load:

1. Give up. Anything and everything you can. This has the benefit that you will discover what it is you actually need in life. For example, try giving up poetry. If you start to die inside, you’ll know that poetry is one of the absolutely essential things you need to survive. What do you need to survive?

2. Giving up doesn’t have to be forever. Seriously. There is a voice inside you that whispers “you’re a failure”. Give up that voice. Cause you’re not a failure. Give up smoking cigarettes. Then start smoking again. Then give up again.

3. Give up on many things at once! Listen, it’s almost certain this won’t last – so why not give up 3 or 4 things at once? Then you can experience what it feels like to live without all 3 or 4 things. Again, not putting pressure on oneself about giving up forever will make giving up multiple things much easier. And this should be easy.

4. Responsibility isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Especially if it keeps you locked in one place, doing the same thing. Give up on “I have to”. Try doing things because you want to instead.

5. I sometimes feel unhappy. Okay, that’s a lie. I always feel unhappy. Or rather dissatisfied. Maybe we’d be happier if we gave up on the pursuit of happiness and concentrated on more achievable goals instead.

6. When you give up on things – people may misconstrue that to be a judgment against them and their habits. For example, if you give up meat, meat eaters may think you are judging them as they’re munching on their bacon cheeseburger deluxes. (6.5 – Sometimes that’s true. Take vegans for example. Vegans are the most judgmental people on the planet. Consider giving up on judging others.) Don’t worry if people get defensive about your new lifestyle choices and fall into unprovoked rants about their rights to do whatever it is you’ve decided to stop doing. People just like to chase their own tails.

6. Take note of how your fast makes you feel: Do you feel lighter? Less burdened? More open? More emotional? More understanding of how other people live their lives? I hope so. Cause if your fast isn’t making you feel like this, you should probably just give up your fast.

7. It’s not about how long you give something up, or if you give it up forever, it’s about the WAY in which you give it up. Give up fully and completely. Fasting from food, shouldn’t be about not eating. Fasting from food should be about releasing yourself from the attachments of hunger itself. If you quit, say, drinking, and then spend the entire fast wanting a beer really bad – well you’ve sort of missed the point. Giving up is about giving up the WANT. It’s about desire more than action. If I could kill my attachment to cigarettes and red wine – well I’d probably start doing them again cause my work would be pretty much done.

8. Quitting gives us the opportunity to figure out how to do things differently in our lives. For example, I think most vegetarian food sucks. But now I don’t eat meat! What to do!? I have to figure out what is out there that I can eat. I highly recommend Indian food.

9. There are some things in life that stimulate emotions we’d rather not feel – discomfort, frustration, anger, jealousy. Sometimes the thing that stimulates those emotions is life itself. If life is a race, I would like to stop running, step off this well worn path, sit on the green hill next to the racetrack, smoke a spliff and stare at the clouds crawling slowly across the sky. I won’t say anymore than that.

10. What should you give up? As the quote on my tea bag this morning advised me: “Re-examine all you have been told – dismiss what insults your soul.” Yup. It’s really that simple.

That makes me wish Walt Whitman had written a Guide to Quitting also…