Listen to Your Stubbornness
Notes on shoulds, lists, and the clarifying work of ethics.
One of the ways ethics helps us live better lives is by providing clarity. It can clarify a moral boundary. (e.g., “How far is too far?”) Or it can clarify a resolution of competing personal and social obligations. (e.g., “Is it okay that I do fantasy football?” from November’s mailbag). If ethics is most frustrating when it denies us easy answers to difficult questions, it is most helpful when it brings clarity to situations and decisions that would otherwise confound us.
The ethical distinction between what we want to believe about our lives and what we actually do with our lives is particularly clarifying. If you ask me what I care about on any given day, I’ll give you an answer that sounds pretty good. But if I keep an hourly diary and record where my time actually goes, you’ll have a different answer.
“I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do,” James Baldwin wrote in 1966, alluding to a popular song by Tina Turner and Ike Turner at the time.
(Pause for Tina Turner appreciation.)
Listening to our stubbornness, especially when we don’t want to admit to it, is a crucial part of teasing out the difference between our stated convictions and our lived convictions. Ever notice yourself turn suddenly against an idea because it violates a core conviction? That’s stubbornness. Ever think you’d like to try something but then back away when the moment of commitment arrives? That’s stubbornness. And while it sometimes leads us astray, stubbornness can be wonderfully useful to self-understanding.
I use this exercise with my students to help them detect their stubbornness when it comes to choosing a major. I write a list of the top four majors they are considering in pen on a piece of paper. I get a thick permanent marker and cross one off. This major is off the board, I tell them. Pretend the university president just issued a public statement that you and you alone are barred from this major. How does that feel?
I ask them to cross off another major. How does that feel?
Now there are only two left. Which one are you most stubborn about losing?
Usually students have a kind of physical reaction to one of the majors on the list being crossed off. They say that Biology is their top priority, but when I cross Physics off the list their shoulders hunch up a bit. Or they say that Economics is more useful on the job market than History is, but their mouth scrunches up when I cross off History.
Students tell me all the time what major they think they should choose, or what major their parents think they should choose, or what major everyone else is choosing. These are all shoulds, and shoulds are important to ethics. Sometimes we should listen to our parents. But listening to our stubbornness is also important.
If they have a physical reaction to a thick line of ink on a piece of paper, that’s a sign. If they exhale in relief when I cross through a major, that’s probably the best one to let go.
“Don’t cross that one off,” they say, and I know we are getting somewhere.
If you have a big decision to make, or if you’re weighing a handful of options for your future, try writing them down and crossing through them, one by one, with a permanent marker. Listen to your stubbornness, and consider following where it leads.
Stubbornness, like ethics, can be incredibly clarifying.