REsources for Living
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I have a fairly big front lawn—or what passes for a large lawn in my suburban California location. If, that is, it passes for a lawn at all. It’s not exactly a level field of lush, manicured green. It’s rutted where the moles have been at it, and wasn’t that level to begin with. But it has grass. Well, grasses. Several kinds, most of which aren’t usually considered lawn grasses, some of which die in the summer and some of which die in the winter. Also different kinds of clover and a low groundcover. And a variety of different weeds. Against which I have a vendetta.
Well, not really. After all, the whole “lawn” is basically weeds. But there are a surprising number of weeds that will either turn prickly as they grow or will have seeds that are prickly. And since I use this space for training my dogs, I am determined that everything prickly or potentially hazardous to dogs must go. And so I spend hours sitting on or roaming the lawn, pulling out weed after weed.
Many years back my neighbor, after watching me at this pursuit day after day, observed, “You know that’s not going to work, don’t you?” He wasn’t wrong. I have this enduring fantasy that I’m going to manage to pull every weed of some particular type before it goes to seed, and then it will be (mostly) gone forever, but of course it never happens that way. In fact, mystifyingly, each year weeds that I have never before seen in the space appear, as if they were evolving new and pricklier ways to thwart my efforts. Each year as I pluck away at my lawn, trying and most often failing to pull up the roots that will regrow the weeds overnight, his words come back to me.
“You know that’s not going to work, don’t you?” It makes me wonder about the difference between persistence and foolish obstinacy. I mean, persistence is obviously a good thing. Parenting books and articles tell us to praise our children’s efforts, rather than their outcomes, so that they will learn that trying hard is what ultimately leads to success. People of all ages are assured that the crucial personality trait for doing well in life is “grit,” the ability to overcome obstacles and follow a task to completion. We tell ourselves, in little posters on Facebook and in song and with a loving pat on the shoulder, “You can do this hard thing.”
But what about the time and emotional energy and soul-force that we waste on things that are never going to work, are never going to be right? For many people their greatest regret is the years they have wasted staying in a job or a relationship that sucked all the joy from their lives. It is possible to spend vast amounts of time and money preparing for a career which, it turns out, you purely hate. You could enter a relationship with commitment and dedication and realize at some point that you would be better off away from this person than with them. Sometimes it turns out that if you have a square peg and a round hole you would be better off if you stopped pounding.
So how do you know? How do you tell when you need to power on until you make your goal and when you need to stop pushing the river and just go with the flow? How can you tell when this is one of those many instances when in order to achieve something meaningful you need to work really hard to make it happen, and when you have encountered the exception that is just going to drain the life from you if you fail to change paths?
I can’t say that I know. Certainly I’ve given up on things that I wish I had followed through on, and stuck steadfastly through heartbreak that I could have walked away from. And goodness knows there are many, many situations where you really don’t have much of a choice if you or loved ones are going to survive. But here’s my guess: it is good to learn to recognize different kinds of pain.
Those who have undertaken any kind of exercise program know that building strength and endurance requires a certain amount of discomfort. Your muscles grow stronger at the point of fatigue, which is not a place that many of us enjoy. Stressed muscles ache, but they also grow stronger, and before long you are able to do things without pain that you weren’t able to do before.
Most of us also know the feeling when a wrong move—or simply effort beyond what we are capable of—does genuine damage. The sharp sensation of something ripping or popping is a cue to stop. Right now. Before you do any more damage. Some kinds of pain you absolutely should not persist through. And for many people with chronic illnesses, the pain you should not persist through looks from the outside a whole lot like many other people’s healthy effort. It isn’t the same for everyone.
But I suspect that deep down we largely have a sense of what is the pain of effort and fatigue, and what is the pain that comes from damaging ourselves. Souls, like muscles, can ache and burn and grow. Souls, like muscles, can tear when they are twisted too hard in the wrong direction. It isn’t always clear in the moment, but if you listen to the pain, I suspect that eventually you will know.
Which is how I know I will carry on with my front lawn, weed by weed, patiently trying to make room for what I want to grow, trying to protect what I love, even though I know I’ll never fully succeed.
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