Back when I used to help Mystery run workshops, we had a division of labor. He did most of the teaching, I did most of the organizing, and he made most of the decisions. Our program was three nights in the field: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and two days of seminar. At one point Mystery decided that students could no longer take seminar and workshop during the same weekend. They would have to come one weekend for the seminar, and then the following for the workshop. This was great for local students, but a huge hassle for anyone traveling.
No amount of convincing would change Mystery's mind on this. I tried, of course, explaining that the reason we had fewer and fewer students was because no one wanted to fly out two weekends in a row. He wouldn't budge. Mystery is stubborn.
At the time this was frustrating, and even mind boggling-- how could someone so smart make such a bad decision and not listen to reason?
There's another side to being stubborn, though. When he was around twenty one, Mystery was a virgin who was bad with girls. Many young men have been in this position, and most of them never really solved their problem. But mystery was stubborn. He spent his last couple dollars every day taking a bus downtown so that he could go to nightclubs and observe the dynamics between men and women. He took notes, he pondered, he came up with theories, and he tested them.
I remember how hard it was for me to walk that path, and I had it all handed to me, courtesy of Mystery. I can't fathom how hard it must have been to be the one blazing the trail, pushing through rejection after rejection, not even knowing if it was possible to get better. Now it's sort of taken as a given that you can get better with women, at least in my circles, but back when he started, common sense told you that you had to make due with the cards you were dealt.
Think of how stubborn you would have to be to get through something like that. Whether you think pickup is a good thing or a bad thing, you have to admire that tenacity.
The difference between tenacity and stubbornness is slight. You could argue that if it turns out well, it's tenacity, and if it turns out poorly, it's stubbornness. Just a difference in connotation.
I'm a stubborn person, too. In particular, I'm really bad at taking advice. Some part of my brain always thinks I'm right, even if someone much smarter is giving me advice in their field. I don't try to remove my stubbornness, though, because I recognize that it's the same thing as tenacity. Instead I try to manage it, to add a filter to that "I'm right" impulse, making myself be a little more self critical. Sometimes I think I'm right but I make myself take the advice anyway.
Even with this effort, I intend to remain somewhat stubborn. I will miss out on good advice, but I'll also stick it through when others may not have. It's a trade off I'm willing to take.
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Didn't like this post? Let's try again-- I have another one up at Zen Habits. When this blog is posted, Leo, eight other friends and I will be asleep at a tea farm in Japan!
Reminder-- we're doing a Japan Meetup in just a few days. Details here.
Photo was taken about 5 minutes after I emerged from the subways on my first trip to Japan eight years ago.
I'm a student, 23, from the .
I don't drink, except for the rare odd alcopop and a handful of sips of
lager and wine, and I have never been drunk (not for any religious reason or
because I have alcoholic parents or anything like that- drinking just never
appealed to me).
This is nothing more than my own personal opinion on the
matter, and I will try not to over-generalise and lump all drinkers into the
same category. Before I start (a little
disclaimer if you will), I would like to state that I don't believe alcohol in
itself to be a bad thing, and I have absolutely nothing against people who
drink solely for the taste. If you enjoy
the taste of a cold beer and can be trusted to drink within your limits, then I
see no problem with that at all. That's
your personal choice and I would be some sort of dictator to take that right
away from you. Likewise if you feel you
need a couple of beers to help alleviate social nervousness, then that's fine
by me. I don't judge people who drink
sensibly but as somebody said in another comment, it's so hard to refrain from
a negative view of drinking when I'm surrounded by the worst examples of
it. It's this culture of 'drinking to
excess' that I have a problem with.
I'm not going to lie - I deeply resent the fact that
regularly drinking alcohol to excess has such a central role in modern society,
largely because it makes my life as a non-drinker that much more
difficult. It's almost as if the ability
to socialise nowadays is dependent on alcohol.
As a student, there is no avoiding the presence of
alcohol. You are surrounded by
activities and parties that are centred around nothing but drinking
ridiculously to excess. I know a few
other students have mentioned in the comments here how difficult this makes
life for a non-drinker - and it's very true.
Practically everyone seems to make a habit of getting "smashed" on a
regular basis and it's so hard to socially connect with these people when you
don't. Socialising and drinking go hand
in hand and if you don't drink, you will have to explain why.
You can be absolutely sure that whenever I'm on a night-out,
at a party or similar event, it's just a matter of time before the inevitable
question, "why don't you drink?" I've
lost count of the amount of times I've had to field this question; usually with
a short response along the lines of "It's just my personal choice. Beyond the simple fact that I don't like the
taste, the whole 'getting smashed' concept just does not appeal to me." I don't openly flaunt it or preach it like it's
the gospel for everyone to hear (there's no high-horse here), but this is never
enough. People will usually dismiss it
as nonsense, call you stuck-up or boring, and then proceed to try to get you
drunk (sometimes even to the point that the word "force" wouldn't be totally
out of place). I've heard it all before,
"it's just one beer, what's the big deal?"
And it's this fact that drinkers can't just respect and accept this
personal choice, and look at you like you're somehow strange or weird simply
because you choose not to drink, that annoys me more than anything. I don't like the way drinkers are always
trying to get you to be like them.
One of the comments below says, "No one is judging you for
not drinking, so don't be sanctimonious."
This couldn't be further from the truth.
To quote another comment, "the reality is that NOT drinking is the most
alienating fucking thing on earth. Everybody does it, and you don't." It's such a social taboo these days and
people do generally judge you when you tell them, and as alluded to above, you
will be asked to explain your choice (cue accusations of being unsocialable and
needing to "lighten up a little"). This
constant need to have to justify my life-style choice gets on my nerves.
A couple of drinks for "liquid courage" is a
different thing, but it ought to be the heavy drinkers that need to have to
justify their regular consumption of ridiculous amounts of alcohol for, from my
personal perspective, no other real reason than it's the "social norm" and they
do it for conformity's sake - just to be like everyone else and fit in. In a lot of cases, it's just a matter of
giving in to peer-pressure because they feel the need to be accepted (even if
it means drinking large amounts of alcohol that they secretly believe tastes
vile).
The bottom line is that being a non-drinker makes you a
social outcast. It's got nothing to do
with how fun you are as a person without alcohol, because drinking is so
engrained in modern culture and the fact you don't conform to the norm will be
largely frowned upon. You won't be
accepted as part of a group if you don't drink.
I recognise that I might not in the best position to comment on "drunkenness"
(having never been intoxicated in my life), but from my own experiences I can
state that I can't stand drunken behaviour.
I don't understand why anyone would want to go down that path to a loss
of self-control, vomiting, hangovers, partial memory loss and generally acting
in an unpredictable and erratic manner. I
hate being in the company of drunk people (who think they're the world's funniest
person all of sudden for doing nothing more than jumping around like a crazed
lunatic) and usually end up leaving before the drinking gets out of hand
because I don't want to be around people who are acting in that way. For me, it's practically impossible to
socialise and have a good time with a drunk when sober, and you will usually fall
out of company in some way or another.
To end of this post, I will just state that I'm happy to be
a non-drinker and I will not change that.
I do resent the fact that "binge-drinking" is such a central part of modern
culture and that so many feel the need to partake for nothing more than
conformity's sake, and the fact that choosing not to drink makes life more
difficult because in most cases it makes you a social outcast; but to this day,
I stand by my stance that I don't need or want the things that alcohol offers. I'm capable of being happy, inhibition-free
and having a good time without the need to down alcoholic beverages to the
point that I throw up and can't take more than two steps without falling over.
Ben.