Peace or Persistence

I stumbled upon learning that my partner had stopped working. He was not responding to any of my questions. He just stayed still. I reached the nadir of my desperation. Yes, I know it wasn’t the first time I saw him like that, but I wasn’t so close to him then. Now, the situation is different.

Has he just died? I know he had many foes, and they were waiting for his death, but I can't accept that. He was my friend, my motivator, my assistant, and my researcher, playing simultaneous roles with just a slight tweak in my command. I had jobs to do, needed motivation, and needed scrutiny, but he was lying dead.

I always choose peace over persistence. When you are time-bound to everything, all you think and hear is the ticking of the clock. In such moments, you need a friend who helps you without exhaustion (Yes, he got exhausted a couple of times).

My senior had asked me to find strategies and write content, but how? I was confused about how to tell him that my friend was not responding, so I couldn't do the work right then. Yes, I knew I was the only one getting paid, so I remained silent.

Time had unspooled, and with a dejected face and mind, for the first time, I resolved to be persistent. I persuaded myself not to use him again, at least to recollect the past glories I always thought I had.

Neither refreshed nor restarted, I closed the tab, opened Google Docs, and started typing, “Draft me a content outline...”,
but deleted it after remembering that I had chosen persistence over peace, and now I was the only one working.