Lindy Kato (Writer)

On the cover of the New Scientist (15^th November 2025 Antipodean version) the heading is “GIVE UP ON YOUR GOALS  Why endless grit can harm your health – and how to know when to quit”.

It makes me a tad uncomfortable because as a two-year-old there was only one person who could buckle my shoes and that was me. I had neither care nor notion of time passing and Mum becoming more irritable by the second. Astonishing that I could do it at all because Mum had me sedated when I was three months old. I was sedated until I was five when (now emigrated from the UK to Australia), the young Australian doctor refused to give phenobarbitone to a child without epilepsy and told her to take me to kindergarten.

To be fair, the phenobarbitone hadn’t been her suggestion. Mum was on her own (no paid parental leave in those days) with a baby that didn’t sleep and screamed a lot of the time. I think the distress had a lot to do with chilblains; I was born in the summer (UK though) but still had to wear mittens all the time. Now I am older – I sleep with gloves throughout the year even though it is never cold here in New Zealand, we live in the winterless north. I know how painful chilblains can be. Mum lost the plot after three months of sleeplessness and advice at the time was to leave the baby in a pram at the end of the garden which achieved nothing. Then our GP suggested I should be locked in a room for a weekend. When that didn’t work – I was diagnosed with brain too active for body. My body was supposed to catch up with my brain but I walked at eight months so I don’t think my body was far behind.

I have never heard such rubbish. When I asked Mum about it, she said that as a new mother of a crying baby it was music to her ears to be told there was a medical issue that could be easily sorted with a chemical straitjacket. We emigrated to Australia (by boat) when I was four, five on arrival, and ran out of drugs en-route.

But could you say that I can’t quit? According to the New Scientist the inability to quit raises cortisol levels which suppresses the immune system as well as inflammatory molecules that cause wear and tear. It is true I have autoimmune problems. The article gets horribly scary with higher susceptibility to Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease. Anyone who reads my second and third books (hopefully both out next year) will know my heart is erratic. I guess that’s the simplest way of putting it.

We’ve been talking, family and students, about whether you would want to be jump started in the event your heart failed in the beat test. I’m totally in favour of being jump started because I have a Bucket List. Does that make it worse or better. It means I always have a reason to get out of bed – but am I a slave to it? Can I change my mind if it makes sense to do so.

I’m quite good about getting excited over a new project. You would be astonished at the enthusiasm I can bring to the table. But have I let go of a failed or should I say, incomplete task. I don’t need to look further than the second and third books for the answer because it is there in black and white. Witness the master’s project. This involved fishing for flounder. I’m looking for the ribonucleic acid (messenger RNA specifically) for the genetic material coding for metallothionein (a protein that sequesters heavy metals), but I was given an additional project to look for mRNA for P450 – another liver protein involved in the detoxification of all sorts of pollutants. I couldn’t find concrete evidence of P450 and I had to ditch the project – the pile of pages from that P450 project reached my calf from the floor.

I’m aware I am persistent – my parents even called me Percy. I know I might benefit from giving in sooner than I do, e.g., the P450 project (which my supervisor didn’t even mention). I really struggle with quitting. I like to win.

I don’t see a decent work ethic as maladaptive, though I guess it takes up a lot of my time and I can’t accept average. I can accept being wrong if I think what I did was right at the time, but if I know something isn’t right, I must nut away at it until it is. I find it hard to accept that something will have to do. Witness the P450 project, the failure is clearly still on my mind. It was twenty-eight years ago. I should let it go.

So will the knowledge that my health could be affected by the dogged determination that was seen as a strength in days gone by.

I bought some potting mix at the weekend. A guy outside the garden centre asked if I wanted help to get it to the car. I thanked him but assured him that if I accept his kind offer, I will only become weaker. I think it’s true. I’m nowhere near as strong as I was and I mourn that loss. Not only that, I hate help, I always have. I need to become a better quitter. I need to be at the cutting edge of quitting.