resistance (the war of art)
How many times a month, a week, a day, do you hear your inner voice tell you ‘stop’, ‘you are no good’, ‘you are a failure’, ‘you are selfish’. According to Steven Pressfield, if you are fighting against these lies, you must be going down the path God and his angels are delighted in.
We are in war. War with our inner self, and war against an unseen force the author has titled ‘resistance’. Resistance is smart, resilient, distant, and unforgiving. Resistance shows itself as depression, self-doubt, busyness, and works through people, events, and fear.
The War of Art is the first book I have read this year that broke me – moved me to tears (thanks Jared Loftus, crying is the best). It told me I shouldn’t smoke, I’m not special, and I think I’m brave, but I’m living a cowards life. It is offensive to the core of who I have become, and it serves as the wake up call so many creative minds need this very second.
Resistance is not a fabrication of Steven Pressfield, but a manifestation of evil that has infiltrated many if not all aspects of existence today. I am too weak to battle it alone, but I am pledging today to allow God and his angels to work through me daily to continue down a road of actualization. I will battle Resistance and become the man God, my wife and my small world/territory deserves. Below is just a taste of some of the truth telling he brings to the table in The War of Art:
We can’t be anything we want to be.
We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.
Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
David Meigs in a hotdog suit, playing kickball. spring 2016