Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2022-12-14 12:09 am
silveradept) wrote2022-12-14 12:09 am
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December Days 2022 #13: Tenacious
[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
Another context-sensitive adjective. Sticking to things can be a sign of not giving up or not giving in easily, and it can also be a sign of holding on to things long past the point where they should be let go.
My tenacity comes from wanting to understand. Why is this thing throwing an error message? What does it mean, and most importantly, how do we fix it? What's the root cause? No, not that one, although it's important for alleviating the immediate problem, the root cause? (More often than not, the answer to that is "racism." If it isn't that, there's probably another common -ism that is the root cause.)
Having a problem in front of me invokes a desire to solve the problem. Some problems eventually get backgrounded, and some problems don't get solved because actually solving them requires skills that I do not have and can't acquire, but because of the variable attention stimulus, problems that I can solve I tend to want to solve quicker rather than letting them be, so I don't risk forgetting about them until the problem is once again in my face. Or someone else is staring the problem in the face that I said I would fix and forgot about, because something else captured my attention. So I have both the tenacity to fix things, once I get them started, and a far too ready ability to forget things that I do need to fix, but that don't remind me of themselves enough to stay in my brain. Lists and reminders work reasonably well for this, even with the danger that I will ignore them both in favor of something else that's more gratifying to my brain chemicals.
Some of the desire to understand is perfectionism demanding that no moves can be made until all of the information is known, so that a single, perfect move gets made. This allows for procrastination on important things in fear of messing them up. It also encourages trying to find a Grand Unified Theory about other people so that, regardless of who they are or what beliefs they hold, a person can be persuaded to a point of view or can say least understand what their opposition believes. (That is a pipe dream, and science continues to provide more evidence that it is a pipe dream.) It's hard for a brain like mine to accept that people can be arbitrarily cruel, petty, venal, or otherwise harmful, or that they let greed, vengeance, religion, or other philosophies take precedence over the lives and needs of other humans. (And other living beings, although I'm not consistent about those aspects.) "Because evil" is an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion, because evil is cosmic and undefined. Because greed, because indoctrination, because charisma, because racism, all of those are better conclusions, even if they surface deep-seated, strong, and core elements of the society as the rotten things they have become. Things with causes can be understood, and eventually, defeated.
Some of the desire for understanding is because not understanding someone else has been an easy way for an interaction to sour. Because of the variable attention issue, there are times where my attention gets hijacked by something else in the room, even when I'm trying to concentrate. Fidgets help, as does having music on in the background that I can actively screen out. Even with those things, it's not a perfect system and repetition is sometimes necessary. As I've gotten older, I've developed some useful phrases to help explain what didn't come through, and that softens the request significantly.
Sometimes I want to understand or have a cause because it sucks having a body and brain that does things without apparent cause, or that does things and there's not an immediate thing to point at or a One Simple Trick to bring everything back into alignment. Having a better understanding of myself in those moments is about being forgiving, but also recognizing the thing for what it is and adding it to the list of potential symptoms or manifestations of the underlying issues. A lot of it in this phase is playing Whack-A-Mole as things pop up and need dealing with, but eventually it should synthesize into being able to recognize the class of thing and apply an appropriate remedy. It's difficult when my first instinct is "don't change anything, it might make it worse" and the correct action is "apply these changes, and things will feel and work better," and they do. Logical brain gets it, but the nonlogical parts are the ones that have to get on board and actually do the thing and stick with it long enough for the truth to come out.
All of the tenacity and the analysis and the synthesis and attempting to be an amateur polymath who knows and understands both themselves and the world around them is chasing the idea that there can be perfect understanding, and perhaps the hope that understanding will progress sufficiently in my lifetime that I don't end up time-limited because my organic self ran out of clock. I want to experience so many more things than I will get to as an organic being, and to try and fully satiate the endless maw of curiosity by running out of material to feed it, rather than by running out of time to experience things. (This, too, is a pipe dream. Long gone are the times where a single person might hold the entirety of knowledge in their minds, or even a significant fraction of knowledge.) The entire concept of not knowing how long there is left on the clock is supposed to be inspiring as much as it is terrifying, as much YOLO as thanatophobia, if not more. Perhaps understanding how vast the gulf always will be between what I know and what there is left to learn unbalances the situation.
Still, tenacious is the adjective. Persistence, strength, adhesion. Not being easily dissuaded when presented with setbacks. Overcoming through effort, assisted by knowledge and experience. Perhaps ironically, the thing that I most wanted to be recognized for when I was younger, after years of only existing in the frame of excellence at scholarship. The thing I try to recognize others for as a grown-up. Striving to shift from a fixed mindset of talents and skills and point allocations that don't change over time to a growth mindset where skill and ability are mostly obtained from practice and persistence, once a thing is learned or demonstrated, and where failure is part of the process of learning, rather than a permanent stop point or a demonstration of immoveable limitations. It is easier to be tenacious in the face of failure if you can see how you might adjust strategy, tactics, or techniques to make more progress or defeat the obstacle in front of you, or if you saw the obstacle move when you pushed on it.
No connection to Jack Black's group, even though Tenacious D does intersect with my life occasionally.
- tenacious (comparative more tenacious, superlative most tenacious)
- Clinging to an object or surface; adhesive.
- Unwilling to yield or give up; dogged.
- Holding together; cohesive.
- Having a good memory; retentive.
Another context-sensitive adjective. Sticking to things can be a sign of not giving up or not giving in easily, and it can also be a sign of holding on to things long past the point where they should be let go.
My tenacity comes from wanting to understand. Why is this thing throwing an error message? What does it mean, and most importantly, how do we fix it? What's the root cause? No, not that one, although it's important for alleviating the immediate problem, the root cause? (More often than not, the answer to that is "racism." If it isn't that, there's probably another common -ism that is the root cause.)
Having a problem in front of me invokes a desire to solve the problem. Some problems eventually get backgrounded, and some problems don't get solved because actually solving them requires skills that I do not have and can't acquire, but because of the variable attention stimulus, problems that I can solve I tend to want to solve quicker rather than letting them be, so I don't risk forgetting about them until the problem is once again in my face. Or someone else is staring the problem in the face that I said I would fix and forgot about, because something else captured my attention. So I have both the tenacity to fix things, once I get them started, and a far too ready ability to forget things that I do need to fix, but that don't remind me of themselves enough to stay in my brain. Lists and reminders work reasonably well for this, even with the danger that I will ignore them both in favor of something else that's more gratifying to my brain chemicals.
Some of the desire to understand is perfectionism demanding that no moves can be made until all of the information is known, so that a single, perfect move gets made. This allows for procrastination on important things in fear of messing them up. It also encourages trying to find a Grand Unified Theory about other people so that, regardless of who they are or what beliefs they hold, a person can be persuaded to a point of view or can say least understand what their opposition believes. (That is a pipe dream, and science continues to provide more evidence that it is a pipe dream.) It's hard for a brain like mine to accept that people can be arbitrarily cruel, petty, venal, or otherwise harmful, or that they let greed, vengeance, religion, or other philosophies take precedence over the lives and needs of other humans. (And other living beings, although I'm not consistent about those aspects.) "Because evil" is an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion, because evil is cosmic and undefined. Because greed, because indoctrination, because charisma, because racism, all of those are better conclusions, even if they surface deep-seated, strong, and core elements of the society as the rotten things they have become. Things with causes can be understood, and eventually, defeated.
Some of the desire for understanding is because not understanding someone else has been an easy way for an interaction to sour. Because of the variable attention issue, there are times where my attention gets hijacked by something else in the room, even when I'm trying to concentrate. Fidgets help, as does having music on in the background that I can actively screen out. Even with those things, it's not a perfect system and repetition is sometimes necessary. As I've gotten older, I've developed some useful phrases to help explain what didn't come through, and that softens the request significantly.
Sometimes I want to understand or have a cause because it sucks having a body and brain that does things without apparent cause, or that does things and there's not an immediate thing to point at or a One Simple Trick to bring everything back into alignment. Having a better understanding of myself in those moments is about being forgiving, but also recognizing the thing for what it is and adding it to the list of potential symptoms or manifestations of the underlying issues. A lot of it in this phase is playing Whack-A-Mole as things pop up and need dealing with, but eventually it should synthesize into being able to recognize the class of thing and apply an appropriate remedy. It's difficult when my first instinct is "don't change anything, it might make it worse" and the correct action is "apply these changes, and things will feel and work better," and they do. Logical brain gets it, but the nonlogical parts are the ones that have to get on board and actually do the thing and stick with it long enough for the truth to come out.
All of the tenacity and the analysis and the synthesis and attempting to be an amateur polymath who knows and understands both themselves and the world around them is chasing the idea that there can be perfect understanding, and perhaps the hope that understanding will progress sufficiently in my lifetime that I don't end up time-limited because my organic self ran out of clock. I want to experience so many more things than I will get to as an organic being, and to try and fully satiate the endless maw of curiosity by running out of material to feed it, rather than by running out of time to experience things. (This, too, is a pipe dream. Long gone are the times where a single person might hold the entirety of knowledge in their minds, or even a significant fraction of knowledge.) The entire concept of not knowing how long there is left on the clock is supposed to be inspiring as much as it is terrifying, as much YOLO as thanatophobia, if not more. Perhaps understanding how vast the gulf always will be between what I know and what there is left to learn unbalances the situation.
Still, tenacious is the adjective. Persistence, strength, adhesion. Not being easily dissuaded when presented with setbacks. Overcoming through effort, assisted by knowledge and experience. Perhaps ironically, the thing that I most wanted to be recognized for when I was younger, after years of only existing in the frame of excellence at scholarship. The thing I try to recognize others for as a grown-up. Striving to shift from a fixed mindset of talents and skills and point allocations that don't change over time to a growth mindset where skill and ability are mostly obtained from practice and persistence, once a thing is learned or demonstrated, and where failure is part of the process of learning, rather than a permanent stop point or a demonstration of immoveable limitations. It is easier to be tenacious in the face of failure if you can see how you might adjust strategy, tactics, or techniques to make more progress or defeat the obstacle in front of you, or if you saw the obstacle move when you pushed on it.
No connection to Jack Black's group, even though Tenacious D does intersect with my life occasionally.