This is definitely an issue for me. As a Taurus...yeah, I'm stubborn. (Or as my friend said when I was asked this question, "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"). But apparently not stubborn in the right, proper, and correct way. Too much on #1--change of course freaks me out, which is why I tend to be a Tower card magnet--and definitely not ANY on #2 here:
"We must strive to discern between our stubbornnesses: (1) those that instinctively arise when we confront a strange new reality that rouses our discomfort, the defensive emotion, the self-protective resistance to opening our minds and psyches to foreign input, though its integration is mandatory for furthering our personal evolution, and (2) those that we consciously commit to, on proactive behalf of a life-quality we passionately desire to foster, knowing we will need to steel our resolve in order to resist the expected influences of those who'd seek, with intention or wholly unconscious, to sway us from our commitment. One holds us back; the other secures us in an objective.
This second stubbornness is, as I've described it, nothing more than a commitment we make to ourselves to pursue a goal at all costs because have determined it is that important to attain. We will lose that twenty-five pounds. We will stop drinking. We will stop cheating. We will get a new job, move out, leave our suffering marriages—no matter what collateral upset we cause in the process. We are willing to anger or confuse those affected by our stubbornness, though they may feel threatened by our commitment to change (and its effect on their self-perceptions), perhaps even lash out or lob bombs in an attempt (conscious or not) to create sufficient chaos to subvert our efforts. But we will not be subverted. We know, deep in our bones, we must stay the course. We yearn to feel the satisfaction of commitment."
I find it really hard to sustain stubbornness for the second one, big time. It's incredibly difficult to plug along on something against all odds and all logic and reason. It's incredibly difficult to plug along when you are upsetting the shit out of people. It's incredibly difficult to not be swayed back at the damage you are doing to other people in order to Get What You Want, Dammit!!!! It's hard to keep wanting what you want when other people are paying a price and you are feeling like a giant asshole.
Not to mention the practical logistics of this, which I have been failing at.
And frankly, there is very, very little in the world that I want soooooo badly that I will go through hell and high water no matter what to chase after. I feel the calling thing badly, but uh...not THAT badly that I have that level of NO MATTER WHAT determination. I've never had that about much of anything. And why is that?
I honestly think that not getting my driver's license until my 30's kinda broke my brain, or at least it did not develop properly as an adult brain should have. I've spent my life in situations where I literally could not escape if I wanted to, so I was stuck putting up with it. I don't really know how to solve problems other than "put up with it." There's a lot of things I wanted to do, but since I couldn't get myself there and most of the time, couldn't talk someone else into taking me, I didn't go. I am very limited in job hunting or living arrangements without a car now still. So I am used to having to let my dreams and goals go because I was too inadequate to be able to go after them.
And now, trying to adjust my brain into "technically you can go where you want...ish..." is just weird and hard. It's fighting against a broken brain some days. Some days it's exciting to go other places, other days it's frightening. Most days it's all of the above and me trying to move past fear and/or inertia.
I am forcing myself to do driving practice once a week. Frankly, sometimes I am renting a Zipcar to go to the ATM or the post office or the grocery store for an hour, rather than some big trip. It's cheaper to rent on weeknights, there's less to do on weeknights, and I am finding it hard to come up with stuff to do that motivates me enough to drive out of town, and I'm almost out of places to go in town that I normally can't get to sans car and would be excited to see. Which is kind of sad, really. I need to do my practice today or else I don't have time to do it this week and I am not even interested in hopping in the car to go somewhere today. There's nowhere I really want to go on a Monday night at the moment, I've been to the stores I wanted to go to and I'm saving my cash for a whopping shopping weekend of festival fun. I just kind of want to piss off and stop doing it...but I'm still forcing myself for now whether I want to or not.
And shoot, if I am having a hard enough time motivating myself to drive around town once a week, how am I going to get FIRED UP ENOUGH to move away? I don' t know. I'm not on fire to do a move, that's for sure. I am not on fire enough to conquer all of the hurdles between here and there.
Which leads us to...
"But what about the grey areas, the in-between spaces, the 'just how sure am I?' questions? Life is full of these subtle complexities, which often play the proverbial shell game with our decision-making capacities as we consider pro-and-con ramifications. Engaging with these shades-of-grey is central to how we ultimately decide what we want and don't want. This process must occur before we make a commitment (or as much as that's possible, considering everything changes and we don't always know what we're going to find until we find it); otherwise, the very premise of 'having committed' is already being compromised.
And yup, that turned out to be true. I committed and then it meant nothing because I couldn't judge the practicalities before I actually was able to start working on them. And then failing them.
The mind is a crafty, corrupting scoundrel who will say almost anything to us to muddy our gut-level clarity. To commit yourself with this steely self-supporting stubbornness is to honor the wisdom of these feelings in your gut, which communicate, in stark wordless terms, what is right and wrong for you. Once this clear communication has occurred, there's little solid ground on which the crafty mind can argue its adversarial case. The wiggle-room disappears. The words become 'just words'.
Well, I dunno about that. The gut says one thing quietly, but the OH SHIT I CAN'T HANDLE THIS and the "really, do I want to move to a giant city? not really really even if the gut says to" are all very loud about it.
We know what we've got to do. Now it just boils down to consistency and perseverance: getting up every morning, resolve intact, committed to repeating this same step as many times as it takes to attain the result, each new day another confrontation with subversive influences, a confrontation which we stubbornly refuse to let defeat us."
...Yeah.
Well, at least I'm still doing the driving. For now, anyway. Some weeks I am just waiting to see if this is the week I keel over and quit renting the car unless I need to. And then I think I'm really giving up.
