WRITING WEDNESDAYS
Wrestling an Alligator
By Steven Pressfield | Published: January 20, 2010
A friend asked me the other day how I experienced Resistance. What did the phenomenon feel like to me? I told him it was like wrestling an alligator.
"And I haven't even got a pen knife."
That’s not always bad. Sometimes the beast is a cute little cayman. I can clamp his jaws shut with my left hand, grab him by the tail with my right. It’s no problem to wrap him up and get him into the trunk of the car.
But sometimes that gator gets a little bigger. Right now, in the project I’m working on, he outweighs me by eighty pounds and he’s kicking my ass.
How Bob Dylan does it
Have you read Bob Dylan’s book, Chronicles? A significant section covers his struggles trying to put together one specific album. I don’t know if Mr. Dylan would say he was dueling Resistance or just the challenges of the work, but his style of combat, if memory serves, included impulsive cross-country airline flights, massive music listening, employment of controlled substances, midnight forays into weird parts of town, crazy phone calls, collaboration with strangers and a general instinct-driven voodoo-thrashing that somehow all came together and produced the answer he was looking for.
Resistance: 100 million years B.C.
My own struggles are a lot more reptilian. Maybe it’s because the medium I labor in is an essentially-solitary enterprise that requires hours of focused concentration daily (or nearly daily) over a sustained period of time. It’s not aerial combat, it’s foot-slogging. It’s infantry work. But back to that alligator.
Here’s why the gator-wrestling metaphor rings true to my experience as a writer battling Resistance:
1) The enemy is as big as I am. Bigger sometimes. And he’s all muscle. By no means is it a foregone conclusion that I’m gonna beat him.
2) He’s sneaky-fast. The bastard is cunning; he’ll sneak up on you underwater and strike out of nowhere. And he can cover ground like a racehorse.
3) He’s invulnerable. His hide is two inches thick–and I don’t even have a pen knife.
4) I have to grapple with him belly-to-belly. There’s no other way. This is not a rapier duel or an archery match; it’s up close and personal–two bodies, head-to-head, tail-to-tail, rassling in the mud.
5) The gator can get you from both ends. One blow from that tail will break your leg. And those jaws? If he gets them around you, fuggedaboutit.
6) The bastard is prehistoric. He’s got scales, man! And look at those eyes. He doesn’t even have warm blood. Seth Godin calls Resistance the “lizard brain.” There’s a lot to that. This foe is primordial; he was walking the earth with the dinosaurs. To him, I’m lunch–and he’s got a predator’s pedigree that goes back 100 million years.
7) There’s no negotiating with this sonofabitch. I can’t holler uncle or make a deal. And this sucker doesn’t just want to kill me, he wants to eat me.
The only way to win is outlast him. I can’t shoot him; I can’t drown him; I can’t punch him in the nose and make him quit. The only hope is to stay so close to him that he can’t get those jaws around me, while using my body weight to wear him down. His only weakness is those stubby little arms. If I can keep him off-balance long enough and keep him thrashing trying to get to me, I can tire him out. The fight will go out of him–at least till tomorrow, when he’ll be back.
An invitation to comment
That’s how I experience Resistance. How about you? How does this monster come after you? I’d like to know. Write in below under “Comments.” If we get some good stuff, we’ll run it in this space–and we can all compare notes.
Bob Dylan, we’ll be glad to hear from you too.
Without a penknife!
This is brilliant.
Of course, you’ve got one hell of a sleeper pinch, Steve.
I loved this post.
The beast comes after me late at night. For whatever reason, I severely doubt my work at the end of the day. Resistance hits me hardest when I’m weakest.
Eagerly awaiting Mr. Dylan’s comments…
I always imagine Resistance as that desperate, petty drug addict, lurking in the alley, armed with a knife, who mugs me while I’m walking to my office. I can either chase him off by dodging him or making a brief stand or let him take my money (my attention or my momentum).
My Resistance is a bog. It’s thick, and as dark as ink, and I’m sunk in it over my head, blinded. I can breathe through I don’t know what miracle, but my breaths are shallow, only enough to sustain life.
I wade through the bog, each step an effort. If I’m good, and struggle hard enough, sometimes it will reward me with a small island where I can rest. Never for long, though: soon enough my oasis sinks back into the bog, and I can watch myself get sucked back in little by little.
It’s either sentient or haunted, because quite often there are whispers: they remind me of my failings, tell me how desperately far it is to the shore.
I *think* there is a shore. I’ve never seen it, not even in a dream.
As long as there’s hope that one day I’ll walk in the sunlight, breathing chestfuls of air, I struggle on.
Some days I suspect that putting this hope in my head is one of the monster’s favourite jokes.
I heard ‘reptile brain’ menitoned in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. One of the climbers, the doctor from Texas, was left for dead at night, but he wasn’t dead. He crawled the edge back to camp. He credited his survival to his reptile brain function.
With that in mind, fighting the alligator always goes better when it’s done on their terms. I pull on my gator boots, cinch my gator belt, (just so he’ll know what happened to the last gator whipped up on) and wade into the swamp and stay there all day. I only worry when the gator trails shards of its last opponent. That gator knows how to win and the lessons learned from losing were final.
The negative force driving me to distraction is: I want to know the outcome before I make the effort. This mental frenzy disorients my will, leaving me dazed. I overcome this, “spin” by meditation.
My Resistance is a smooth-talking good-looking salesman. He’s all flash and smiles. He says, “I have something special for you today!” or “You’ve never seen a price this good!”
One day he wears a heavy black coat and says “Hey lady, wanna buy a watch?” while furtively holding out one side to display them. Another day, it might be a stack of real Persian rugs at unbelievable prices. Or he might change tactics completely and offer up the most beautiful organic produce I’ve ever seen. And I am hungry.
Unlike real salesmen, my Resistance is not beaten when I ignore him for a few minutes or walk quickly past his stand. No. My Resistance alternately whispers and hollers in my ear, then tugs at my wrist, or starts pitching stuff around my office. He tells me about his kids, and how they need school clothes/rent money/medicine. He reminds me how important it is to eat beautiful organic produce (at unbelievable prices!). Each day, he serves up exactly what I think I want because Resistance knows he’s got me as soon as I am distracted from that thing I really do want – the Work.
For me, Resistance shows up as . . .
. . . sort of what I’m doing here, right now.
My Resistance is a bully.
The sort who is part of your daily life for years before you become aware of his pernicious effect. He is arrogant, convincing, and charismatic. I’ve never done anything to him, but he always singles me out and kicks my ass.
He gives me false choices and tells me they’re the only ones I have. He creates a narrative where I lose and he wins, a basic narrative with a million different beginnings but just one end. His behavior is instinctual; he’s hardly even aware anymore that his every word and action is barbed and poisonous, but it is. Allowing him to heap on the abuse has its short-term rewards, sometimes. It’s easier than fighting, and he can be downright charming when you give him what he wants. But it’s never enough.
You can’t appeal to your teacher or your parents. A fight with a bully is always your fight alone and it’s always personal. You can’t reason with him. You can’t even respond to him.
You just have to stand up to him no matter what. Every day, getting on that school bus, you just have to take a deep breath and prepare for the worst.
But the first time you stand up to him, a whole new world opens up, and even thought you might not win every fight, you’re never the same person again.
My resistance is a fairy wizard. He loves to distract me with shiny new ideas. “Here, what do think about this? Isn’t it lovely? Oh, but look at that idea over there. Yes, that is much better. Go for that one. But wait, what’s this in my pocket?…” Sometimes he showers me with so many at once, I feel I’ll drown. He also likes to set fire to my seat to see me jump out of it and run around.
When he is in a serious and concerned mood, he reminds me of the bills that need paying. “Oh, yes. You really should do something practical. Go find work that will pay your bills. You have to eat right? What about that car repair? You really do need health insurance you know. Nobody makes money at their art. Don’t you know that? I’m not so sure you have the talent anyway.”
It has taken a long while for me to see him. I would catch glimpses of him, but then fall into his fog of distraction and forgetfulness. It has taken some practice but I find that if I just sit still, I can see him and what he is up to. I can say, “Hi, Resistance, I see you. Thanks for all the ideas. I am going to see what I can do with the idea right in front of me though.” I can allow him to do his thing, but I go on with my art.
The quote from “The War of Art” that helps me is:
“What do I feel growing inside me? Let me bring that forth, if I can, for its own sake and not for what it can do for me or how it can advance my standing.”