When do you give up?

This morning, I was washing the dishes. Next to the sink there was a bowl that had been sitting there for 2 months with a brownish ring around the top that was coating it from a previous meal, I think it was buffalo sauce. I had tried to wash the bowl a number of times before, but somehow that ring got baked onto the bowl from the oven and it wasn’t coming off. I had soaked it, scrubbed it, nothing was working. This time, I picked it up and rubbed the brown coating with my finger a bit. Parts peeled off immediately. I looked at it and was astounded, both by how curious this unwashed bowl was making me and what insight this brought to me. I don’t know much about cleaning. Yet, when I had thought I tried everything and I mean I literally didn’t think this bowl could be cleaned anymore and I was wondering if I should throw it out, something else worked. 

It brought me to think about other experiences in my life where I frantically try to change something. And I stick with it for a while, I try many different things, some things that work and some that don’t. And then, in some cases, I give up. I let things be, I throw it out, I step back or down. I don’t know when the right thing is to let things sit for awhile and then have another try or when it’s better to do something else altogether. All I can see is that sometimes I’ve made choices where I left something and that was a good idea and sometimes I felt regret about it. 

Before, I thought it’s important to never give up on anything. I’m not convinced of that anymore. I don’t know when the right time is to keep going and when it is to stop. Do you? I wonder if that’s one of the mysteries of life.