On resistance

I hadn’t given it a name. I knew it existed of course. Who could not who has ever tried something new. I had thought that I knew it as fear. But fear is really too big, too amorphous, too general, too difficult to name. This is something much more focussed and with much more intent, a true adversary with many years’ practise of winning. This is Resistance, as described by Steven Pressfield in The War of Art.

I had heard of the book sometime ago. It sat on my wish list for months, many months. I finally bought it. I read it almost in one sitting. It deserves all the praise and plaudits heaped upon it. For within its pages, I found the reason behind the Monday morning dread and the repeating agony of sitting down to write a Musing, create a pattern or tackle the thorny marketing issue. I can forget about all the things I haven’t done and have yet to do on Saturday and Sunday but when Monday rolls around, as it does relentlessly and pitilessly, here is Resistance turning up at 6 am with nauseating exactitude. I have no need of an alarm. I awake feeling queasy, uneasy. There is only one thing to be done. I must get up and do. Something. Anything. Being Irish, this usually means making tea. Tea, you know, for an Irish person has almost mystical properties and so is the ideal potion with which to prepare for battle. For a battle it is, with distraction, with avoidance, with procrastination, with myself, the Fifth Column of Resistance. Most days I feel the push-me-pull-you of… “oh God what if I do” and “oh God but what if I don’t”. Sometimes it’s paralyzing. I am being inched out slowly and at knife point, along one of those narrow bridges over a deep ravine so beloved of film makers. I cannot see to the other side. Is there another side? I am afraid to look down, so sure am I of the sharpness of the rocks below for of course there are rocks, sharp, pointy, unforgiving ones. And possibly crocodiles. I could go back but that would be wounding, perhaps fatally. So I must go forward, take that step. And the one after that. For who knows, I might fall and in the falling crash upon the rocks below, ending ignominiously as a crocodile’s lunch…

Or I might fly.

I think it worth the trying for in truth, despite the agony, I’ve never been happier.