I am an incredibly lazy, slow-moving person (more on this another time, but please don’t argue, I promise it’s true.)
And yet, paradoxically, I possess an innate unwillingness to give up on certain things.
What’s interesting about that sentence is the word “certain.” I do easily give up on some things. It’s not uncommon for me to attempt something once and then say, “Nah, I’m out.”
But other things? I would rather run the New York Marathon in nothing but elf slippers than surrender.
What’s the difference between the two types of things?
I have absolutely no clue.
When I start a task, it’s almost impossible for me to know in advance whether I will get annoyed and give up or get annoyed and decide I will do the thing even if it kills me. And, weirder still, the same task performed on a different day can result in two different responses!
Por ejemplo:
Four or five Christmases ago, I asked for a Star Wars board game I’d seen on Amazon. I received the package in the mail and opened it with enthusiasm. I pulled out the instructions and started to browse them.
They were, to put it simply, intense. This was a 2-4 hour game and the setup alone was going to take an hour. My eyes started glazing over just looking at the giant booklet of directions. And then I realized I was looking at the “quick-start guide” and the actual rulebook was still in the box.
As any good millennial would, I turned to the internet. I pulled up a tutorial video for this game on YouTube (apparently some people are really into it) and started to watch it. Until I realized that the tutorial video was three hours long.
“Nope,” I said to the YouTube geek wearing a Chewbacca shirt. “I’m out.”
I put the box away and ignored it.
For four or five years.
That is how easy it can be for me to surrender. I didn’t even try it, I just said, “Nah.”
But then, about two months ago, for no reason I can think of (maybe Mercury was in retrograde?) I dug the box back out, spent the hour setting it up, read the quick-start directions, and conned my roommate into playing with me. It takes up our entire dining room table.
And guys, to say this game is complex is like saying Lady Gaga is unusual. (Nothing against Lady G, I think she has a very effective marketing plan going on and she is committed, which I respect.)
But this time, for who knows what reason, I was determined to learn this game.
We set it up and spent two hours trying to learn how to play.
Then we needed to go to bed, so we left it set up.
We came back to it the next night and played for another two hours.
A couple of busy days went by, but then we returned to the game, having to refresh ourselves on the rules (we refreshed on the ones we understood anyway, but we kept having to learn new ones as we went.) This time we only lasted an hour.
That was almost two months ago.
And the game has been sitting there ever since. Taking up our entire dining room table. (I guess it’s good to know we don’t really need our table? But that’s also a bummer, since it took us a lot of hours to build that table.) It’s literally collecting dust at this point.
But I don’t want to surrender! I don’t want to put it away and give up. There’s something in me that has dug a trench and settled in for the long battle.
Why? Why do I do this?
Yes, I’m actually asking. Because this game is not an important thing for me to conquer. I don’t get anything by figuring out how to dominate a galaxy far far away. Why have I chosen to dig my heels in on this particular thing? And should I go with it, or should I force myself to give up?
What do you think? And does this kind of thing ever happen to you?
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