Monday, March 06, 2006
1001 Roads to Resistance
For Valentine's Day when my sister and I were little, my mother used to leave little heart-shaped chocolates and cute notes outside our doors so that we'd find them when we woke up. This year, she gave us each a copy of Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, which is a completely unsentimental self-transformation manual about how to overcome resistance, which he calls "the enemy within." It's written in a swift, unadorned style, and each short chapter is padded with lots of white space, so that one can read it in one sitting for full impact. Esquire called it "a kick in the ass," and that's exactly how it's posited by its author, who wants to welcome the brave to the harsh world of art as reality rather than coax the timid to join a fantastical, more accommodating world, as so many self-helpers do. The book was such a good pep talk that I read it a second time a couple of days after my first reading. And then, because I wasn't sure I'd really absorbed it, I read it a third time. At that point, I saw that even the reading of a book about conquering resistance had become a form of resistance in my twisted little universe.
I am the Scheherezade of resistance. I can send my psyche down 1001 different paths, each of them seemingly full of promise at the outset, and each will at some point take that dreaded turn toward resistance. Self sabotage, some call it. A cyclical course of internal obstacles that keep us from realizing our potentials. Whence does this fear of becoming great in our own eyes arise? Why is it so hard to become what we truly want to be, and why does most of the difficulty come from within? Why must everything be a battle? Why must we be such fearsome warriors to survive and succeed when we'd rather be viewing cherry blossoms or watching fluffly little clouds? Maybe I'm just talking for myself here. Maybe there are some people who actually like the constant struggle, get off on it, or at least get off on making the most of it. I don't feel like fighting my demons; I'd rather we all got along instead. But apparently this is not allowed in the current reality construct. Invite your demons in for dinner and they end up feasting on you.
At times like this, when I can't get myself to finish a project no matter how close I get, when I feel that none of the work I do is any good anyway, when I feel like my life bears absolutely no resemblance to any life I might have designed for myself, yet there's no one to blame for its current state of affairs other than myself--at times like this, I feel buried alive by resistance. I know there's air out there, and that one solid push will put me in contact with it, but I whine about not being able to breathe as I ineffectually scratch at the inner dimensions of my self-dug grave. And then I couch the situation in metaphors, like I just did, so that I won't have to dig in and really examine my feelings. The truth is, my feelings are still hard to contact, even after lots of therapy that I would categorize as successful. I've evened out, emotionally--the new and improved manic depressive, with lower highs and higher lows!--but it's difficult for me to contact either anguish or joy. And in between, I feel stymied and stifled. Nothing quite gets through. Creating art is channeling energy, according to Pressfield, and that's something I've always felt was true. At this moment in my broadcasting history, my channels are crossed and clogged. Must be time for a detox...
Categories: depression, transformation
I am the Scheherezade of resistance. I can send my psyche down 1001 different paths, each of them seemingly full of promise at the outset, and each will at some point take that dreaded turn toward resistance. Self sabotage, some call it. A cyclical course of internal obstacles that keep us from realizing our potentials. Whence does this fear of becoming great in our own eyes arise? Why is it so hard to become what we truly want to be, and why does most of the difficulty come from within? Why must everything be a battle? Why must we be such fearsome warriors to survive and succeed when we'd rather be viewing cherry blossoms or watching fluffly little clouds? Maybe I'm just talking for myself here. Maybe there are some people who actually like the constant struggle, get off on it, or at least get off on making the most of it. I don't feel like fighting my demons; I'd rather we all got along instead. But apparently this is not allowed in the current reality construct. Invite your demons in for dinner and they end up feasting on you.
At times like this, when I can't get myself to finish a project no matter how close I get, when I feel that none of the work I do is any good anyway, when I feel like my life bears absolutely no resemblance to any life I might have designed for myself, yet there's no one to blame for its current state of affairs other than myself--at times like this, I feel buried alive by resistance. I know there's air out there, and that one solid push will put me in contact with it, but I whine about not being able to breathe as I ineffectually scratch at the inner dimensions of my self-dug grave. And then I couch the situation in metaphors, like I just did, so that I won't have to dig in and really examine my feelings. The truth is, my feelings are still hard to contact, even after lots of therapy that I would categorize as successful. I've evened out, emotionally--the new and improved manic depressive, with lower highs and higher lows!--but it's difficult for me to contact either anguish or joy. And in between, I feel stymied and stifled. Nothing quite gets through. Creating art is channeling energy, according to Pressfield, and that's something I've always felt was true. At this moment in my broadcasting history, my channels are crossed and clogged. Must be time for a detox...
Categories: depression, transformation
