Quitting

Longstanding workplace issues such as mistreatment, the normalization of toxic behavior, and a lack of accountability for workplace culture have fueled a growing trend known as revenge quitting.

This phenomenon, on the rise since the 2000s, sees employees leaving their jobs not just for better opportunities, but as a form of protest and self-preservation against unfair treatment.

When employees resign as a final act of protest against toxic workplace conditions, the impact on organizations can be significant. One of the most obvious consequences is financial loss. The abrupt departure of employees also sends a powerful message to remaining staff, potentially leading to decreased morale, trust, and engagement.

High-profile cases of revenge quitting can also damage an organization’s reputation, affecting customer relationships and investor confidence.

Finally, revenge quitting can have lasting consequences on workplace culture. If the toxic behavior that caused the resignation remains unaddressed, remaining employees may become disengaged, leading to a decline in work quality.

Research has found that when employees feel a genuine sense of belonging, they are more engaged and loyal, they produce more innovative solutions, and they are more reliable and productive.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Employees – Respect; Testimony - It is certainly permissible for a Christian to quit an incompatible job and look for other work. But let us be sure to leave an employer with a good testimony after giving proper notification of quitting (Rom. 12:18; Eph. 6:5-8; 1 Tim. 6:1-2); 2) Church ministry - Does any of this sound familiar in a church setting when people quit attending? Here are several biblical principles that might apply as antidotes: Respect and Integrity in Leadership - (Matt. 23:11; 1 Tim. 3:1-13); Accountability (Matt. 18:15-17; Acts 15:1-29); Promoting a Culture of Belonging, Harmony, and Unity (Psa. 133:1; Rom. 12:16; Eph. 4:3).

Yuta Sakamoto was exhausted from selling home-improvement projects, including the boss’s demand that he help clean up at renovation sites on weekends. One day, he mustered his courage and announced he wanted to quit. But his boss warned him he would be ruining his future, and Sakamoto shrank back.

Then a friend proposed a solution. Sakamoto didn’t have to confront the boss again—he could hire someone to do it for him. After sending $200 and his case details to a quitting agency, he was finally a free man.

“I would have been mentally broken if I had continued,” says 24-year-old Sakamoto, who found a new job as a salesman at a printing firm.

A labor shortage in Japan means underpaid or overworked employees have other options nowadays. The problem: this famously polite country has a lot of people who hate confrontation. Some worry they’ll cause a disruption by leaving, or they dread the idea of co-workers gossiping about what just transpired in the boss’s office.

Enter a company called Exit. Toshiyuki Niino co-founded it to help people quit after experiencing his own difficulties in leaving jobs. “Americans may be surprised, but I was too shy or too scared to say what I think,” says Niino, 34. “Japanese are not educated to debate and express opinions.” Exit now handles more than 10,000 cases a year in which its staff quits on behalf of clients.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are several approaches you might take with this story: 1) Fear and Courage – Learning how to overcome fear with faith and courage (2 Tim. 1:7); 2) Work Ethic – Finding a career that fits with our skills and well-being (Col. 3:23); Wisdom and Guidance – Sakamoto’s friend suggesting the use of a quitting agency illustrates seeking counsel from others when making decisions (Prov. 11:14).

Author and researcher Bruce Feiler crisscrossed the country, trying to understand the roots of shifting attitudes towards work. He collected 400 extensive life stories of Americans in all 50 states, interviewing everyone from CEOs and mom-and-pop proprietors to schoolteachers and line workers. Feiler concluded that “unprecedented numbers of Americans are walking away from their jobs, rethinking their routines and breaking away from traditional expectations.”

Fifty million Americans quit a job in the last year, and another third of the workforce is renegotiating where, when, and how they work. Three-quarters of Americans in a recent survey said that they plan to look for new work this year.

Feiler discovered a shift: “Today’s workers are increasingly rejecting the script that has long defined the American Dream. They rebuff the notion that each of us must follow a linear career—lock into a dream early, always climb higher, never stop until you reach the top."

His data shows that the average worker goes through a moment of disruption or reinvention every two and a half years—what he calls a “workquake.”

In the end, fewer Americans are searching merely for work these days; more are searching for work with meaning. Some still emphasize wealth and status, but others stress service, self-expression, or personal fulfillment.

William McRavenwas, commander of US Special Force Command, gave an oft-quoted speech at a university graduation in Texas in 2014. He spoke of his experiences in becoming a US Navy SEAL. SEAL training is regarded as being the toughest in the world. McRaven spoke about his Hell Week at Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL (BUD/S) training:

The ninth week of SEAL training is referred to as Hell Week. It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and one special day at the Mud Flats. The Mud Flats are an area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana sloughs—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you. You paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing-cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure from the instructors to quit.

As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class was ordered into the mud. The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.

Looking around the mud flat, it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over eight hours till the sun came up—eight more hours of bone-chilling cold. The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything. And then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.

The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiasm. One voice became two, and two became three, and before long everyone in the class was singing.

We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well. The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing—but the singing persisted. And somehow, the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.

Job, Epicurus, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and other famous thinkers wrestled with explaining why an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God would allow suffering.

Amid the pandemic and its 6.4 million reported deaths (as of August, 2022), the Pew Research Center surveyed 6,485 American adults—including 1,421 evangelicals—in September 2021. They were asked about how they philosophically “make sense of suffering and bad things happening to people.”

Among the survey’s main findings:

7 in 10 American adults agree that suffering is “mostly a consequence of people’s own actions.”

7 in 10 agree that suffering is “mostly a result of the way society is structured.”

8 in 10 believe—either in “God as described in the Bible” (58%) or in “a higher power or spiritual force” (32%)—yet say most suffering “comes from the actions of people, not from God.”

7 in 10 believe human beings are “free to act in ways that go against the plans of God or a higher power.”

5 in 10 believe God allows suffering because it is “part of a larger plan.”

4 in 10 believe Satan is responsible for most of the world’s suffering.

Less than 2 in 10 say they have doubted God’s omnipotence, goodness, or existence because of suffering.

At some point in the stretch of days between the start of the pandemic’s third year and the feared launch of World War III, a new phrase entered the zeitgeist, a mysterious harbinger of an age to come: people are going “goblin mode.”

The term embraces the comforts of (laziness): spending the day in bed watching [the TV] on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth; downing Eggo waffles over the sink because you can’t be bothered to put them on a plate. Leaving the house in your pajamas and socks only to get a single Diet Coke from the bodega.

“Goblin mode” first appeared on Twitter as early as 2009, but according to Google Trends “goblin mode” started to rise in popularity in early February 2022. “Goblin mode is kind of the opposite of trying to better yourself,” says Juniper, who declined to share her last name. “I think that’s the kind of energy that we’re giving going into 2022 – everyone’s just kind of wild and insane right now.”

But as the pandemic wears on endlessly, and the chaos of current events worsens, people feel cheated by the system and have rejected such goals. On TikTok, #goblinmode is rising in popularity. “I love barely holding on to my sanity and making awful selfish choices and participating in unhealthy habits and coping mechanisms,” said another with 325,000 views.

Many people tweeting about goblin mode have characterized it as an almost spiritual-level embrace of our most debased tendencies. Call it a vibe shift or a logical progression into nihilism after years of pandemic induced disappointment, but goblin mode is here to stay. And why shouldn’t it? Who were we trying to impress, anyway?

Possible Preaching Angle:

The world seems to be unraveling as people give themselves over to apathy, selfishness, and hopelessness. Let’s remember “the hope we have” (1 Pet. 3:15) and “shine as lights in a dark world” (Phil. 2:15) and keep up self-discipline and godly behavior while we wait for the Lord’s return (Phil. 3:20).

Jon Krakauer cleared the ice from his oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and straddled the summit of Mount Everest. It was 1:17 PM on May 10th, 1996. Krakauer, an accomplished climber and journalist, had not slept in 57 hours. He had not eaten much more than a bowl of ramen soup and a handful of peanut M&M's in three days. Still, he had reached the top of the Earth's tallest peak—29,028 feet. In his oxygen deprived stupor, he had no way of knowing that storm clouds forming below would turn into a vicious blizzard that would claim the lives of five fellow climbers. Yet he knew his adventure was hardly finished.

In his book Into Thin Air, Krakauer describes what he felt:

Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against long odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I'd coveted since childhood. But the summit was really only the halfway point. Any impulse I might have felt towards self-congratulation was extinguished by the overwhelming apprehension about the long, dangerous descent that lay ahead.

Only 44 people have reached the summit of all 14 of the world’s 26,000-foot peaks, according to the record books. Or, maybe no one has. The difference rides on a timeless question getting a fresh look--what is a summit?

Ed Viesturs believes he knows. He is one of the 44, the only American on the list. In 1993, climbing alone and without supplemental oxygen or ropes, he reached the “central summit” of Shishapangma, the world’s 14th-highest mountain. Most climbers turn around there, calling it good enough.

Before him was a narrow spine of about 300 feet, a knife-edge of snow with drops to oblivion on both sides. At its end was the mountain’s true summit, a few feet higher in elevation than where he stood. “Too dangerous,” Ed told himself. He retreated but then he said, “I was one of those guys where if the last nail in the deck hasn’t been hammered in, it’s not done.” Eight years later, Ed climbed within reach of Shishapangma’s summit again. With a leg on each side of the narrow mountain spine, he shimmied across it. He touched the highest point and scooted back to relative safety.

There is a summit, and then there is everything below it. Can close ever be good enough? By asking a simple-sounding question—What is the summit?—the researchers are raising doubts about past accomplishments and raising standards for future ones.

Eberhard Jurgalski has spent 40 years chronicling the ascents of the 26,000-foot peaks. And now he has some jarring news: It is possible that no one has ever been on the true summit of all 14 of those peaks. Some stopped on the central summit, not daring to straddle the ridge the way Viesturs did. Some turned around at a popular selfie-taking spot without scaling the precarious ridge hidden just beyond it.

Climber and author David Roberts says, “The summit does matter. Why does it matter? Because it’s the whole point of mountaineering. It’s the goal that defines an ascent.”

Australian explorer Damien Gildea said, “People are stopping short because it’s too hard. And I say, that’s not really a good excuse for a climber.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Let’s also beware the danger of giving up before reaching the finish line of the Christian life. Thinking that “close enough” is “good enough” leaves us short of the prize (Phil. 3:14).

When Dominican catcher Yermín Mercedes made his Major League Baseball debut for the Chicago White Sox, he impressed fans and team officials alike with his offensive production. He got at least one base hit in an MLB-record eight consecutive games. Unfortunately, his bat eventually cooled off. Mercedes then experienced an extended batting slump that resulted in a demotion to the minor league Charlotte Knights.

Mercedes took his fans by surprise when he abruptly announced his retirement from baseball after a Knights game on July 21st. That night, his Instagram post included the words “I’m stepping aside from baseball indefinitely…God bless you, it’s over.”

At the time, White Sox manager Tony La Russa affirmed Mercedes’ baseball ability, saying that “it could be he’s just feeling frustrated. ... I’ll try to explain to him he’s got a big-league future.”

It’s unclear if the call that made a difference was from La Russo, from Charlotte manager Wes Helms, or from someone else. But the next day, Mercedes showed up for work, posting the following apology:

My dream is to be an established player in the major leagues. I asked God to give me that opportunity and I got it 3 months ago. I owe myself to my family, my organization and my fans [to continue]. I asked again for forgiveness if I have failed them. Baseball is in my blood…and I thank God for guiding me to the right path and to make the correct decision. To those going to a similar situation, forget the criticisms and bad comments. They will always exist to trample on your personality.

Since the apology, Mercedes has continued to play well. On August 16th, he even went 5-for-5 from the plate, homering twice.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Reconsidering a decision and acting in humility have the potential to redeem and even turn around even the worst of circumstances. God's grace and power gives us access to strength outside of ourselves when we need it the most

Japanese Marathon Runner Shizo Kanakuri competed in the domestic qualifying trials for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Kanakuri set a marathon world record and was selected as one of the only two athletes that Japan could afford to send to the event that year.

However, Kanakuri shockingly disappeared during the 1912 Olympic marathon race. He had had a rough 18-day-long trip to Stockholm, first by ship and then by train all through the Trans-Siberian Railway, and needed five days to recover for the race. Kanakuri, weakened by the long journey from Japan, lost consciousness midway through the race, and was cared for by a local family. Being embarrassed from his "failure" he returned to Japan without notifying race officials.

Swedish authorities considered him missing for 50 years before discovering that he was living in Japan. In 1967, he was offered the opportunity to complete his run. He accepted and completed the marathon in 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds, remarking, "It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren."

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible is full of stories of people who quit, but later, with God’s help, finished the race. Moses spent forty years in the wilderness before God renewed his call. Peter denied Christ, went back to fishing, but Jesus restored him. The list continues with John Mark, Sampson, and many others who eventually finished the race.

Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. In the early 20th century, many people were pursuing the dream of flight. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume, to be the recipe for success. Langley was given $50,000 by the War Department to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the best minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, had none of what we consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team had a college education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times followed them around nowhere.

The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked for the paycheck. They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before supper.

And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even experience it. We found out about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.

In standardized math tests, Japanese children consistently score higher than their American counterparts. Researchers have found that it has more to do with effort than ability. In a study involving first graders, students were given a difficult puzzle to solve. The researchers weren't interested in whether the children could solve the puzzle. They wanted to see how long they would try before giving up.

The American children lasted, on average, 9.47 minutes. The Japanese children lasted 13.93 minutes. In other words, the Japanese children tried 47 percent longer. Is it any wonder that they score higher on standardized math exams? Researchers concluded that the difference in math scores has less to do with intelligence quotient and more to do with persistence quotient. The Japanese first graders tried harder by trying longer.

Possible Preaching Angle:

That study does more than explain the difference in standardized math scores. It doesn't matter whether it's athletics or academics, music or math. There are no shortcuts. There are no cheat codes. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Kevin Martin was a minister at a massive church—but one of those churches where it got too burdensome. The administrative machine ate him up, and his world was blackened with depression. At one point he was so depressed, so crushed, that he hastily wrote a letter to his board, immediately resigning from office, and then wrote a letter to his wife and his children saying he would never see them again.

Kevin got in his Buick and drove up to Newfoundland, Canada, without anybody knowing where he was. He got a job as a logger. It was winter. He lived in a small metal trailer, heated at night by a small metal heater. One night, when it was 20 below, the heater stopped working. In a rage, Kevin went over to the heater, picked it up with both his hands, and chucked it out the window—then realizing that was a stupid thing to do, for it was 20 below.

He throws himself on the ground and starts pounding the floor of this small metal trailer. As he’s pounding on the floor, he is yelling out to heaven, “I hate you! I hate you! Get out of my life! I am done with this Christian game. It is over!” He went into a fetal position.

Kevin writes, I couldn’t even cry. I was too exhausted to cry. As I laid there, I heard crying, and heaving breaths, but they were not coming from me. Instead, in the bright darkness of faith, I heard Christ crying, and heaving away on the Cross. And then I knew, the blood was for me: for the Kevin who was the abandoner, the reckless wanderer, the blasphemer of heaven. And then the words rose up all around me: ‘Kevin, I am with you, and I am for you, and you will get through this. I promise you.’

Kevin rose to his feet, got into his car, sped back home, and reconciled with his family and his church. And then went on to lead that church in a healthy way.

There's a great story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian writer who spent years in a Siberian prison. At one point he had become completely discouraged and decided to give up and die. His plan was to stop working out in the field, to lean on his shovel, and wait for the guards to come and beat him to death. However, when he stopped, another prisoner reached over with his shovel and quickly drew a cross at his feet, then erased it before a guard could see it.

Solzhenitsyn later said that his entire being was energized by that little reminder of the hope and courage we have in Christ. He found the strength to continue because a fellow believer cared enough to remind him of our hope.

When U2 were recording their album the Joshua Tree, they spent more time working on the song “Where the Streets Have No Name” than the rest of the album put together. Brian Eno, the producer became so frustrated that he secretly planned to “stage an accident” and erase the tape of the song, so that they would have to start again. He thought they were getting nowhere and would never finish. At one point the sound engineer came into the studio and saw what was happening. He lunged at Eno who was about to hit the switch to erase the tape. There was a scuffle, and the tape remained intact.

Brian Eno was stopped, and U2 finished the song. Ultimately, "Where the Streets Have No Name" was praised by critics and became a commercial success, peaking at #13 in the US. The song has remained a staple of their live act since the song debuted in 1987.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes it’s good to start afresh. To walk away from a mess. But sometimes it’s right to persevere through thick and thin. You might feel like giving up on your marriage, your church, your job, but God wants you to stick in. Don't give up. Paul says “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for in due time we shall reap our harvest, if we do not give up” (Ga. 6:9).

Each year about four dozen athletes gather in Minnesota for the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra. Runners spend good money to embark on a 40-mile ultra-marathon, at night, in January, in Minnesota, while pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies. In this environment, you can literally die from standing still for too long.

Over 25% of the runners will not finish the race. Most of these will drop out at a very interesting point. Participants reach mile marker 24 (aka Checkpoint 24) between 10 pm and midnight. If a runner plans to take on the last 16 miles, he/she must prove they have the skills to stay alive in the case of an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving.

Personally, that sounds like the easiest part of the race. But when the temperature nears zero, and you're covered in sweat, coming out of a very brief respite in a sleeping bag the temptation to quit is strong. The most dangerous thing a runner can do in a race like this is stop.

In the darkest moment of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Sam, the Hobbit, looks up into the poisonous skies of Mordor, and receives an unexpected comfort:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.

For the first time in days, Sam curled up into a deep untroubled sleep. He once again had the strength to endure.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story of little Sam being heartened by the star is so poignant because it resonates with the Christian experience. Every Christian knows what it is like to want to give up and just surrender if that will quiet the world’s constant battering. The early Christians who read the book of Hebrews knew that feeling well. However, the author of Hebrews told them, “So do not throw away your confidence; it holds a great reward” (Heb. 10:35).

In his New York Times bestselling book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Daniel Pink explains the value of being a little behind. In the world of sports, a team that's ahead at halftime—in any sport—is more likely than its opponent to win the game. This has little to do with the limits of personal motivation and everything to do with the heartlessness of probability. But researchers have noted one peculiar exception.

Jonah Berger of the University of Pennsylvania and Devin Pope of the University of Chicago analyzed more than 18,000 National Basketball Association games over fifteen years, paying special attention to the games' scores at halftime. It's not surprising that teams ahead at halftime won more games than teams that were behind … However, Berger and Pope detected an exception to the rule: Teams that were behind by just one point were more likely to win. Indeed, being down by one at halftime was more advantageous than being up by one. Home teams with a one-point deficit at halftime won more than 58 percent of the time. Indeed, trailing by one point at halftime, weirdly, was equivalent to being ahead by two points.

Berger and Pope then looked at ten years' worth of NCAA college basketball games, nearly 46,000 games in all, and found the same effect. "Being slightly behind [at halftime] significantly increases a team's chance of winning," they write. And when they examined the scoring patterns in greater detail, they found that the trailing teams scored a disproportionate number of their points immediately after the halftime break. They came out strong at the start of the second half.

Possible Preaching Angles: Discipline; Endurance; Focus; Perseverance —Sometimes, the pressure of being a little behind is exactly what we need to propel us to greater discipline and higher devotion.

Hungry patron Alex Bowen waited for 10 minutes to order during a visit to a Waffle House at 2am; then he took matters into his own hands.

Upon finding the lone employee asleep, Bowen went behind the kitchen counter and meticulously cooked the food he needed to craft his sandwich, a double Texas bacon cheesesteak melt. While doing so, he took a series of photos documenting his self-service episode—including him paying for the food—and even claimed to clean the grill afterward.

Representatives from Waffle House applauded Bowen's cooking skills, but cautioned against similar behavior, saying patrons should avoid going behind the counter for safety reasons.

No word was given as to why that Waffle House was so understaffed, or how the lone employee might be penalized for sleeping on the job. What is clear, however, is that a man or woman who really wants a double Texas bacon cheesesteak melt can be motivated to take action over and above the normal call of duty.

Potential preaching angles: Sometimes securing God's blessing requires persistence and pursuing the kingdom of God requires a sense of urgency. Hungering and thirsting after righteousness will motivate us to take action.

On January 14, 2015, after nearly three weeks of exhausting and relentless climbing, Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell reached the top of the El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park. They made history as the first people to free climb the sheer Dawn Wall—climbing without aids, using ropes only to secure themselves when they inevitably and repeatedly fell. At three thousand feet high and composed of thirty-two sections—some of which are among the hardest climbs in the world all by themselves—the Dawn Wall had long been considered an impossible endeavor among the mountaineering community.

For nineteen days Jorgeson and Caldwell slept between climbing sessions in tents suspended hundreds of feet into the air. They repeated the same moves over and over as they tried to conquer the Dawn Wall's different sections. Again and again they sliced their hands and fingers open on the razor-sharp rock, making advances of only a few inches. Scaling the imposing Dawn Wall had been Caldwell and Jorgeson's goal for a long time, and they had spent eight years preparing for it. Using social media to communicate, they continually updated their progress. The world watched and waited with bated breath as they conquered this colossal rock face.

Part of the reason the story got so much attention, Jorgeson guessed, is that people can relate to elements of the journey. "It's a big dream, it requires teamwork and determination and commitment," said Jorgeson. "And those aren't climbing-specific attributes. Those are common to everybody, whether you're trying to write a book or climb a rock." At one point, when he was suffering, Caldwell sent out a message saying: "Razor sharp holds ripped both the tape and the skin right off my fingers. As disappointing as this is, I'm learning new levels of patience, perseverance and desire. I'm not giving up. I will rest. I will try again. I will succeed." The specific objective is irrelevant, he said, but both climbers hope that their experience might inspire others to ask themselves: "What's my Dawn Wall?"