Resistance

Right now I’m reading The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. It talks about how in the effort to undertake anything creative or vitally important to your development your biggest enemy is Resistance--with a giant, honking, capital R. This resistance takes many forms, but in all of them it keeps you from doing what’s truly important to you. Whether you’re a writer or an artist or just want to lose weight or learn a language, Resistance doesn’t want you to succeed.

At the same time, I’ve been experiencing great Resistance at home in some of my home schooling efforts. I have not been doing much writing, but my son has, and it has been Hell--with a capital H. There’s been crying, complaining, endless talks about attitude and effort and how it’s important to follow directions. He seems to understand, yet inevitably he ignores the instructions and does entirely the wrong thing. Then he’s upset when I point that out and tell him he needs to try again. What on earth was going on? I’m used to setting expectations weekly work goals for my kids, but I’m not the kind of person who forces them to do work that makes them cry, or at least I didn’t think so.

Then it hit me that perhaps this is a similar phenomenon to my own Resistance, the one that prods me to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 6 now!) instead of finishing my novel, or sitting down with a nice warm cup of tea and a book instead of getting my boots on and hiking off a few pounds. The only difference is that I’m letting myself get away with it, and my son isn’t so lucky.

Finally, after many tearsome talks on the couch, my son was able to explain his own resistance: writing is hard, and he doesn’t like having to do the work (Ouch! That sounds familiar). The rest of his schoolwork has come easy to him. Aha.

I wanted to home school my son partially so that he’d be constantly challenged and learn how to work. He’s really smart, and really lazy. I went to college with too many people like this. They’d cruised through their school careers thinking everything could be easy for them only to find themselves unprepared for the hard work of college and the realization that personal relationships couldn’t be aced like a test.

Of course, this means that I’m the sucker who has to deal with the tears, complaints, and prepubescent drama. I’ve got to be the wall he slams against before he sits back down and does his work. This may not be happy, but it’s healthy. Meanwhile, my empty desk chair beckons. On the plus side, my son seems to have learned something, because he’s finally worked hard and written a few very good stories.

I, on the other hand, have a Buffy DVD to watch.