Stubborn

Stubbornness is also a concept that seems to have a very special place in my system. Being stubborn is one of the traits that seems to be associated with my character way too often. I was called 'too stubborn' before I could even talk or walk. And apparently, it has never changed. My peers seem to see my stubbornness as a source of imbalances in my interpersonal relational system and ultimately my incapacity to be loved or sometimes even trusted by the people around me.

And every time this triggers something very deep. It's a special bottom in my system. My stubbornness is a highly protected mechanism. I actually deeply love and honor my stubbornness. When someone treats me as 'too stubborn,' I tend to become even more stubborn, and sometimes I might dissociate completely or potentially I could even become very angry and mad. In short, my nervous system gets activated directly with the use of this word. Each time it's a different reaction, yet the intensity of my personal energy in those moments is always on rendezvous.

Being stubborn is very rarely seen as something positive. Usually when people use this word to describe someone, it is filled with a lot of shame and judgment. In the cultures I grew up in and lived, the energetic quality attached to this concept is mostly polarized to the shadow side of it and considered as very 'low frequency'. We despise this trait of character. We don't like the rigidity of it. We fear the incapacity to change or to evolve because of the limitations stubbornness imposes on our relationships with each other and with the world.

We also associate stubbornness with ego sometimes. We use a 'big ego' as a synonym for this concept. Which greatly adds to its already not that sexy reputation. And, it's also confusing, since stubbornness has nothing to do with the ego. Entitlement is the tool of the ego, not stubbornness.

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And yet, I am still deeply puzzled about it. I still consider stubbornness as one of my main superpowers.

Stubbornness made me stick to what is important and true to me no matter the madness, the ignorance, and the punishments I received from the outside because of this. It saved my life more than once. It made me who I am. It is tightly related to my courage. It has forged my inner sense of resilience like nothing else.

I took crazy risks thanks to it. I also have failed dramatically. I have also succeeded in the most unexpected spaces with the most improbable strategies. I reinvented myself many times. I discovered more of what is possible. I found faith. I became more intimate with myself and the world thanks to my stubbornness.

So, when others try to shame this part of me, I wake up. I get activated, and I can even lose my shit. My inner protectors take very seriously the attacks on my beautiful and fragile stubbornness.

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The paradox of stubbornness is quite interesting. Many would describe stubborn as someone who lacks flexibility and openness. And they are partially right. But is it truly all the truth about this concept?

Is it possible that somehow open-mindedness is actually dancing in a duo with stubbornness sometimes? Is it possible that to integrate the deeper wisdom of this concept, we need to open up to the possibility that there is also 'the other side' to stubbornness.

Nothing is black or white. Everything is just energy; it's all about how you use it and why. You have access to all the colors and all the textures of each frequency. But sometimes, some energies might produce things that are counterintuitive and have very weird outcomes.

Nothing is good or bad. Nothing is that simple. Everything is interconnected in highly mysterious, yet very logical ways.

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When I was a manager and was being trained for the role of the CEO for an innovation network, I had a chance to undergo a serious series of testing, evaluations, and super-sophisticated studies of my personality, my abilities, and my most powerful inner resources. One of the main things that was always consistent on my charts was my capacity of a very high level of flexibility, adaptability, and open-mindedness. This also seemed as one of the main advantages to my impressive creativity in all kinds of problem-solving.

The deep relationship I felt with all of that and my innate sense of over stubbornness was astonishing. I was actually good with innovation and creativity specifically because I am stubborn as fuck.

After contemplating this for a couple of years, I am still navigating the depth and subtleties of this concept. For me, it's fascinating and very rich as a journey. This is why it makes me sad and angry when people oversimplify everything and use their poor and corrupted judgment to decide what should be shamed and what should be praised.

Nothing should be considered as good or bad. Everything is relative and contextual. All and everything have the potential to be both at the same time. And everything actually is both already, the good and the bad. So, judgment is useless. Because it makes you see only half of the picture. You are half-blind every time you choose between black or white, good or bad, closed or open, desirable or repressed, etc.

In order to see the true colors of our reality, the good and the bad should be seen as an integrated whole. Coherent, resilient, and harmoniously interconnected system.

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If you don't see the paradox of something and you don't completely honor its polar and dual nature, you don't really understand it completely.

Every concept is a tool. It's a process. Every process is transforming something into something else. All are dependent on what we feed the process with, its structural architecture, and the dynamics of the environment where this process is taking place. Some things work and some don't. Some produce results we enjoy, some make us suffer. But, in no way, can we judge what is good or bad and apply this truth and logic to all the other contexts and situations.

The only way to know how it truly works and to appropriately master it is to try it many times in different environments and holistically observe the outcomes it produces for ourselves and for our surroundings.

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When I tried to connect more deeply with the frequency of the word 'stubborn,' what became very amusing to me is to try to deconstruct the word and just feel inside how it is related to the rest of my consciousness. The first thing that I saw is the 2 parts of it: 'stub' and 'born'.

Oh, this is interesting.

A stub can refer to a short, remaining part of something that has been broken off or removed. For example, a stub of a pencil may be left when it's been sharpened.

So in the 'scientifically-ish' language, a stub is a part of the fractal that has been broken, removed, or disconnected in some way from the whole. But, not destroyed (since nothing is actually destroyed anyways.)

When the example is a pencil stub, not many can imagine (yet) how to create a new pencil from the remaining left-over stub. But when a stub is something living, it is quite obvious. When you work your garden and you take out the 'bad' weeds, they will actually grow again and probably even stronger and more resilient. The new-borns from the left-over stubs will be more evolved, more creative, and more powerful than their predecessors.

In all natural systems, the stubs will be born again. In all its glory.

So I guess the stubbornness of Nature is what creates the actual abundance and regenerates pretty much everything. If Nature was not stubborn, we would never know what Life is, how to create it, and how to evolve.

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This example of stubbornness in Nature makes me think about my grandmothers.

Both of my grandmothers were living in small communities close to a forest and mostly off the resources from their land and small family farm. But they were living in different villages and with very different philosophies about how they co-create with Nature and with community.

One of them was about perfection and hard work to get there. It's about being in service and its about respect. It's about doing what's right and what will secure our place and our authority in the society.

All of the family members were asked to come help on the farm and field to clean the bad-weeds every single weekend during the summertime. It was awful and exhausting. Once we finished cleaning all the areas, we needed to restart, as the stubs have grown a new forest around our veggies. We were working the soil under the bright sun for 10 to 14 hours per day every day with almost no breaks.

When I was around 5-6, my grandfather used to pay us money to go collect the potato bugs from the growing plants. He was paying by a bottle of collected bugs. So, parts of my summers used to be to literally walk in the endless fields of potatoes and collect bugs with my naked hands as if they were berries. I hated it. It was disgusting and boring. And it also made literally zero sense to me as a strategy. But, well, my grandfather was very convincing about this nonsense and I guess I also got corrupted by the money part for it.

When I was in that community, I understood why some people believed that growing our own food and being closer to Nature is very hard work and very exhaustingly boring. Why moving to the city and getting a proper education made more sense. Because, people literally worked like horses on the fields in the endless war against the bad-weeds and bugs.

This is why the industrialization, mass-production, pesticides, tractors, GMOs, and others became very popular and very fast. This is also why most have left the villages to build an office career in the capital building on the 20th floor. This is how Ukraine have become a country of dead villages and destroyed soil in less less 50 years.

Because, people got sick of working the earth so hard and in a way that made no sense to be able to survive.

And, by experiencing this first-hand, it makes total sense to me. At least, in that village it does.

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My other grandmother had a very different philosophy about her relationship with her garden, the animals, the community and the forest.

She was actually almost never taking out the bad-weeds from her garden. She never cared about the bugs. She used to say, if the weed is more persistent than my potatoes, that would mean that my potatoes are not very happy.

She was 'working' only twice a year on the field. In the spring when it was time to plant stuff and in the autumn to collect the remaining food on the soil before winter.

The rest of the time, she was visiting her land when she felt like it; there was no particular schedule for that. She just felt inside when she needed to go for her meditative walk in the gardens. She was talking to her plants and she was contemplating the cycles of life and growth of her land as if it was all a coherent whole already. Nothing was considered good or bad. Some plants were food for us and weeds were needed for the rest of the ecosystem to make sense, be more coherent, and resilient.

She was putting her energy and her intention on what she actually wanted and not what she was judging to be imperfect or 'bad' about her garden. She was singing to potatoes her love and her prayer instead of violently ripping the ecosystem apart and taking off everything that had grown naturally around them.

She did not declare an endless war with bad weeds and bugs; she just gave more love and care to her vegetables and to the soil.

When I was spending time in that village, the reality of life close to Nature had a very different taste. We actually never really worked or suffered there.

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When we woke up, we opened all the buildings' doors wide and went to play outside.

Each day was a new day and the inspiration for what was happening was always in the present moment. Our days revolved around pure simplicity and fun. We went to the lake for a swim in the morning. After, we ran bare feet to the forest for some juicy blueberries for breakfast.

We rode horses for fun, sang songs all day long. Went to the garden to pick some fresh food for the shared dinner party and went to the community disco club to dance the remaining of our energies before going to bed.

And, this was pretty much the life we experienced there on a daily basis.

The animals too were free to go wherever they wanted around. Around the house, in the forest, or anywhere else they wanted. They were free exactly in the same way we were. Sometimes our cows ventured to test the grass on the neighbor's fields. But, it was not a problem really. Since all the animals in the community had the freedom to do that and be in complete wildness outside, it never seemed to be a problem or a subject for a conflict between people.

Usually, animals were coming by themselves to the shelter next to the house before the sunset, so no one really gave a fuck where they were and what they were doing or eating during the day. They had their life and we had ours. No one was scared to lose or got stolen their animals either. No one was afraid to not have enough from their fields, so everyone was happy to share their food even with animals that belonged to their neighbors. And, even with their 'enemies'.

A concept of 'work' also was very debatable in this village.

The line between 'working' and 'playing' was almost nonexistent. When someone was working hard, it usually meant that something is not normal or not coherent in the system. It was a time to take a break, relax and go to sleep instead of trying to fix something. Because for them, needing to suffer and work hard to have an abundant and beautiful life made literally zero sense.

They were not just a part of the forest, they were the Forest.

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When I was spending my summers in this village, I honestly could never comprehend why everyone is not living in the forest and having the time of their life together. It made no sense to me to complicate the things to the extent we were experiencing it elsewhere. Life was simple, joyful, meaningful and deeply interconnected with Nature and community.

Hard work was an illusion. Abundance and systemic happiness were a normal state of being and living. Why do we complicate things so much?

Maybe because it's natural for us to evolve into something more complex?

Probably, but complex and complicated is not the same. Complicated is exhausting, stressful and boring. It makes no sense and it's actually not efficient at all. Complex is exiting and fun. Complex is coherent with how the Nature works and it generates more abondance. It regenerates and harmonizes the entire system. Complicated makes us confuse, frustrated and completely disconnected from the reality.

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Even if most of my summers until 14, I have spent in one or the other village. During the year, I was living and going to school in the city (which I also deeply loved and enjoyed in my own way.) But, the distortions and nuances between all of those experiences were actually very hard to process for my child brain. It took me almost 30 years to try to understand why those spaces are so different and what have shaped the belief systems of each tribe.

My 2 grandmothers lived in the villages that were only 75 kilometers apart. In today's standards, it's almost nothing. But, the difference in the experience I had in those 2 places was radically and so deeply different.

How is it even possible?

I never knew how to answer this question. Even if I tried really hard and for very long. I even tried to co-create an ecovillage myself in Quebec for a couple of years in the attempt to figure out the mechanics of how it actually works. How do you create a space where happiness and abundance are just a normal way of being and living.

No surprises, I have failed with my ecovillage idea, but the questions remained so alive in me. Still are.

In order to understand the deep difference of the experienced reality in those 2 villages, I needed to go back to how those places and communities were actually born. On which ground and system of beliefs they were conceived and what was the state of the collective consciousness that have co-created this kind of shared reality.

And, only when I understood the history and the state of the seeds that have emerged both communities that things started to make sense again in my head.

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The grandmother that lived in the 'we-need-to-work-our-ass-off-to-survive' village was actually new to that land and soil. The entire village where they lived was built mainly with refugees from Poland during the second world war. My grandparents were violently kicked off from their native land when they were in their early twenties.

They needed to build a new life from nothing in the new village created in Ukraine during the war times.

A village created during those times had very different mentality and philosophies around how to manage a community and what are the priorities. They were not at all designed with the same spirit in head and heart as the authentic Ukrainian villages from where my other grandmother is from.

Each war-born village had a Kolkhoz, which was a collective farm managed by the state to feed the soldiers and the government.

Kolkhoz was kind of local authority in the village that was collecting food and that the citizens needed to work in the state-owned fields for free to be able to live there. The newly arrived poor, scared, and broken refugees had no choice but to adopt those new conditions and to start working hard for the state while trying to survive and feed their families during a war.

In their system of beliefs in that context, working hard meant surviving.

Which makes total sense now why they were like that. The only thing is, they remained in that system of belief even after the war ended. Even when the Soviet Union fell apart and all the Kolkhoz were destroyed and abolished, the people continued to believe that they need to work hard and to suffer to have a normal life and they also continued to believe that it is normal to fund the government needs, defense strategies, and feed the officials and soldiers.

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Now. What was happening 75 kilometers from there in this other village where my father was born.

This place should more rightfully be called Khutor and not a village.

Khutor is a form of an authentic Ukrainian village where all the power belonged to the people themselves. Sovereignty and freedom were the only laws in the system. They were independent and decentralized. They did not see any value in shared collective farms or institutions bigger than their geographical region. They didn't want to work the land in a way that made no sense (or was harmful to the soil) just to be able to feed 'others'. Others who live in the city and for some reason make the decisions for them and their well-being, but in the office on the 20th floor of a sterile building in the downtown somewhere.

They did had schools and amazing health care. They had shared services, libraries, and all sorts of social clubs. They were actually highly educated and very artistic. It's a complete illusion to believe they were in any way less advanced or evolved that people living in the city or in the other more 'soviet-style' villages.

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They were not working for anyone else except for themselves. Their efforts and energies were directed to respond to the immediate needs of their local community and not the completely disconnected men with clean ties and expensive consumer goods somewhere in Moscow or Kiev.

Why a fuck would they let go of their simple, joyful and fun life just to feed other people they don't even know or agree with. Why would they invest in all kinds of chemicals and high-tech technologies to destroy their soil, forest and natural ecosystem. Why would they feed the city and fund those who have decided to do the war instead of building a peaceful community. More for those who have decided to do their life elsewhere, in the places where the food does not grow naturally and effortlessly next to their table.

Why a fuck would they create a Kolkhoz, buy tractors and willingly work their ass off just to feed the soldiers and the factories that produce more bombs in the cities if for them a concept of a war or even hard work makes literally no fucking sense.

They knew that if the city people were smart enough to remain connected to the Nature and go work their gardens with their heart instead of their hands and ego, they would not need anyone else to feed them or work for them.

Earth is totally capable to answer to all our needs in terms of food requirements and we don't even need to work hard to take out the bad-weeds or to collect bugs to make it happen.

All we need is to keep our connection to the Nature. To sing to her our love songs and just have fun playing, co-creating, and co-evolving together.

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What was happening in this place where many people with this mindset lived during the WWII and how this region have become the nest for the most powerful Ukrainian sovereignty movement and independent society back then will probably be covered somewhere in my future writings. Because it's fascinating to contemplate for me. Because it gives me clarity on what is happening now. Even if I don't live there anymore and even if both of those villages are not at all what I used to visit when I was a kid.

And also, because the story of my ancestors deeply reminds me of the history of the land I now live on. I can see how the 'soviet village' is pretty much the same disaster of what catholic church have build with people arriving from France to feed their authorities. That the authentic village is very similar to what the indigenous communities are trying to make us remember. And what we have so violently took from them. It is the same culture we have punished, shamed and judged. It's a wisdom of how to heal the Earth and the community that we have forgotten.

And this is pretty much the same scenario everywhere. Different actors. Different setting. Different times and beliefs. Different voices and different stories. But the mechanics of the script are always the same.

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But, wait. Before we finish this. What exactly all of this have to do with the concept of stubbornness?

Ha, it's a good thing you are still following. But, I will not answer this question now. I think you have enough of ideas to contemplate yourself where is the wisdom of stubbornness now?

What kind of stubs are you fighting against and try to destroy? And what kind of stubs are you letting to be born again and again. What kind of gardens do you try to control and to which ones do you sing your love song?

Who do you feed with your energy and your land? How do you take care of your soil? For whom do you work so hard? Why do you suffer so much?

For yourself and your community or for soldiers, men in clean ties, for robots and for bombs in the other part of the world?

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(Small note for the picture:

Apologies for the image quality, but I felt compelled to share it as it captures a moment from my childhood, five-year-old me playing with my cousins in our large sandbox next to my Forest in the village where one of my grandmothers lived.

This place and its atmosphere continue to inspire much of what I so stubbornly believe in.

The freedom, the space, the simplicity, the abundance, the fun, the connection with nature and community— all of these elements dancing together in a coherent and harmonious whole.)