Getting to Know Your Feelings - 014 How to Repair Stubborness

Stubbornness: Continuing On In Spite Of Opposition

Nitzuach, another negative emotion in the soul, is also known as akshanus, stubbornness. When a person accesses the nitzuach in his soul, he reveals his stubbornness.

Rashi (Devarim 32:5) says that a stubborn person is ikaish, “crooked.” He travels a crooked path.

The root of stubbornness is when a person makes his own calculations, cheshbonos rabim (Koheles 7:29). When a person embarks on an improper path based on his own calculations, and he remains on that path, he is called an ikaish and an akshan, crooked and stubborn.

A person acts stubborn because he sees opposition obstructing his path, and because of that develops a stubborn attitude to survive. Really, a person in a similar situation can act like his original, intended state, which is to be yosher, straight-minded, and achieve even better results. If he would be yosher, he wouldn’t see any opposition.

Stubbornness is not to be confused with azus (brazenness). A brazen person is undaunted by opposition, yet he won’t necessarily insist on remaining on his chosen path. A stubborn person, however, will continue on his path in spite of opposition. A brazen person doesn’t reverse his steps, but a stubborn person continues on no matter what.

The words of the Vilna Gaon are famous: “A stubborn person is successful.” Healthy stubbornness is when a person persists and doesn’t turn back. Unhealthy stubbornness is when he is being brazen and continues on his path just because he can and not for the sake of reaching a goal.

A stubborn person continues in spite of being opposed. This can be either good or bad, as we will see, depending on other factors.

Healthy Stubbornness

 Stubbornness as a Garment, Not as a Nature

When a stubborn person is seeking something that is not holy, that is unhealthy stubbornness. If he seeks something holy, this is healthy stubbornness.

There is, however, another difference. If a person is never stubborn, then he will never be successful either, especially when it comes to spirituality. There is no one who does not face challenges along his way, and one who has never been tenacious will fall apart upon encountering any difficulty. Even if he doesn’t fall apart, he won’t be able to keep going if he isn’t stubborn. We must be stubborn sometimes, and it must be the right kind of stubbornness.

We have already discussed the difference between holy and unholy middos: the middos that are holy are a garment, while the middos that are unholy are an aspect of a person’s nature that has become an integral part of himself.

This concept applies to stubbornness as well. If a person isn’t stubborn, he will never be successful, but is that stubbornness an integral part of the person, or is the person merely wearing it as a garment? Is it part of his essence, or he is just using stubbornness as a tool to achieve a goal?

Imagine a person sets sail on a ship in order to cross the ocean to another country, and because he enjoyed the journey so much, he decides to stay on the ship rather than disembark at his destination. A sensible person realizes that the ship is only a means to achieve a greater goal. The same goes for stubbornness. If a person acts stubbornly because he knows that he has to, then once he achieves his goal he will not remain with his stubbornness. He only wears it when he has to. If he acts stubborn even when he doesn’t have to, then his stubbornness is evil, because now the stubbornness is not being used as a tool, but has become an inextricable part of him.

A Goal Unto Itself -- Or A Tool?

Explained another way, there are two kinds of stubbornness. One way is to pass through the obstacle, and the other kind is to break though the obstacle.

Healthy stubbornness is when a person is trying to accomplish something and he is met with an obstacle. If he can pass through it, he will, but if he can't, he'll break through it. It was not his intention to break the obstacle. He only did so when there was no other choice. Unhealthy stubbornness is when a person wants to break something so he looks for ways to be stubborn.

We can see this from children. Children often act stubborn for no apparent purpose. A child is asked to sit nicely in his seat, and he refuses: “No! I want to sit in the other seat!” There is no difference between the two seats. Why does he want to sit only in this seat? Because he is being stubborn, unable to accept what he is being told. The child doesn’t use stubbornness to get what he wants. He is being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.

This unhealthy kind of stubbornness is the basis for the epithet, “a stiff-necked people” (referring to the Jewish people). When you tell certain people to do X, they will deliberately do Y, just for the sake of doing the opposite of what they were told. There is no other explanation for such behavior.

Healthy stubbornness is the recognition that stubbornness is no more and no less than a tool to survive, and should only be used when necessary. If there is another option available that does not require "breaking" the obstacle, then that opportunity should be taken. When a person always acts stubborn even when he has a different way of solving the problem, this stubbornness is unhealthy. Even if he is aware that he is wrong, he continues to think the way he does. Some people will get into an argument just for the sake of arguing, even when they have no idea what they are saying. Their stubbornness  doesn’t let them give in. Even if someone explains to him clearly that he’s not right, he will say, “True, but I am not prepared to step down from how I think. I have to finish what I started!”

This unhealthy type of stubbornness makes a person unwilling to accept that he is wrong.

Seeking Victory

There is more to being stubborn. Now we will explore why it is called nitzuach, being “victorious” in an unhealthy way.

Nitzuach comes from the word netzach (eternity); although these two words have the same root, it seems that their meanings are not related. A superficial person understands that the power to fight, nitzuach, is different than netzach, which is to be eternal. Fighting and eternity appear to have nothing to do with each other. 

The Torah says otherwise. Winning the battle isn’t necessarily winning the war. If the enemy isn’t totally wiped out, there is no real victory.

Netzach – a force in the soul – means that the victory is eternal. If there is still a possibility for the opposition to come back and oppose you, it is not netzach.

In the future, when Mashiach comes, the Evil Inclination will cease to exist. That is why the future is called “Netzach Netzachim” – lasting eternity. It will be netzach in its holiest form, a lasting victory.

Now we can understand where stubbornness comes from. The holy kind of stubbornness is the awareness that holiness will prevail in the end, and a person can draw energy from this and persist in his struggle. Stubbornness without a goal for holiness is evil.

This is a very subtle point: Assured success leads to holy stubbornness. The ability to be certain of one’s eventual success – and to persist until it is achieved – is a positive emotion. Healthy stubbornness is a tool for reaching a goal.

 “Netzach” vs. “Akshon”

Stubbornness can only be holy, netzach, if it is applied with a goal in mind. It only becomes unhealthy, akshan, when the stubbornness has no source and the person knows he will not succeed in the end.

Holy Stubbornness Comes From Being “Yashar”

Shlomo HaMelech teaches in Koheles (7:29 ), “G-d made man yashar (upright), but they have sought their cheshbonos rabim (many intrigues).” Unhealthy stubbornness comes from cheshbonos rabim, when a person has his own agenda. The correct path to pursue is that of yosher (straightness). Most people act stubbornly due to cheshbonos rabim, but are they acting based on yosher?

Yosher is the state that existed before the sin of Adam, but today, after the sin, we are in a state of cheshbonos rabim. If a person isn’t stubborn, he will not be successful, but from where should he draw his stubbornness?

The holy kind of stubbornness comes from yosher. Anything other than yosher is cheshbonos rabim, the result of Adam’s sin. We have to be stubborn and overcome the cheshbonos rabim, and when we succeed, we return to our desired state of yosher.

Thus, holy stubbornness is drawn from yosher. Our current state is that of cheshbonos rabim, and we are lacking yosher, but in the depths of our souls, we know that holiness will prevail, and thus, all nitzuach and stubbornness are rooted in yosher. The cheshbonos rabim are a garment of stubbornness, but stubbornness really gets its strength from yosher.

Unhealthy Stubbornness Comes from the Cheshbonos Rabim

Unhealthy stubbornness comes from the cheshbonos rabim. When a person is acting correctly, his stubbornness comes from a place that is above his soul. Unhealthy stubbornness comes from using that very same lofty power in the wrong place, and the person remains in his cheshbonos rabim. This is contradictory, because a person is using a power in his soul that is above logical reason for the lower place of cheshbonos rabim. A stubborn person in this unhealthy state will not stop until he has engineered his own destruction.

A stubborn person persists even when he knows he won’t win; he is full of cheshbonos rabim, calculations. He’s not acting with daas even though he needs to, and that is precisely the irony of it: he continues upon his stubborn path even though he knows he needs more daas to win. He contradicts himself.

It is certainly possible that the stubborn person believes he has a chance of succeeding, and that is why he persists, even though he knows he’s wrong and that he won’t win. Why does a stubborn person act so absurdly?

The answer is because when a person acts stubborn, he is misusing the power to be victorious. He thinks that he must try to achieve victory, which is the power of netzach in the soul, but he is seeking victory without a goal. That is why the Torah calls a stubborn person “crooked.” His path is crooked and has no end, yet he foolishly continues on.

A stubborn person misuses the power of netzach. Only in the future will we be totally victorious; a stubborn person is trying to tap into a power from the future and use it for present.

The Desire for Victory

 Let us explore more deeply the evil of stubbornness. The Sages state (Kiddushin 30b), “A person’s evil inclination gets stronger every day and seeks to kill him…And if not for Hashem helping him, he would not be able to overcome it.” Why is it impossible to overcome the evil inclination without Hashem’s help?

On a simple level, it is because the evil inclination is stronger than a person, but on a deeper note, it is because in order to overcome it, a person needs the power of netzach to fight it. A person himself cannot be victorious – only Hashem is Netzach and Eternal. When Hashem gives a person netzach to be able to fight the evil inclination, that is the only way he can win. That is why we need Hashem to help us fight it.

This does not mean that Hashem enables a person to fight the evil inclination by giving him power. It means that Hashem, so to speak, is revealing His Netzach in one’s soul to have the energy to fight the evil inclination.

Now we see how corrupt it is to be stubborn for evil purposes. A stubborn person believes he is eternal; he thinks he is like Hashem! Of course, no one will say this straight out, but that is what is going on deep in his mind.

Who was the most stubborn person in the world? Pharaoh. After going through ten plagues, he stubbornly refused to believe in Hashem. We also know that Pharaoh declared himself to be a god. That wasn’t a separate issue; it was part of the same problem. Because he believed he was eternal, he didn’t think he could die from the plagues. He did grow very afraid after the plague of the firstborn, but until then, he truly believed in his immortality. That was the root of his stubbornness.

A person is stubborn because, deep down, he thinks he’s eternal. That explains the puzzling behavior of stubbornness.

Fixing Stubbornness: Remember Your Beginning

How does someone come to think he is eternal? A stubborn person isn’t denying Hashem; even Pharaoh admitted that Hashem exists. How can  stubbornness be repaired?

The stubborn Pharaoh grew afraid from the plague of the firstborn because he was reminded of what a firstborn represents: a beginning. When a person acts stubborn, it’s as though he is acting without a head. He has to find his head, so to speak; he must find his beginning.

The Jewish people are capable of a holy kind of stubbornness, but Pharaoh was stubborn in an evil way. When a person is focused too much on his destination, he forgets about his beginning. When there is no beginning of his path, there is no end either, and he is doomed to fail. But if he finds his beginning, he will also see the true end, which is Hashem.

“I am the First, and I am the Last, and besides for Me there is no other God.” When a person realizes Who is the First and who is the Last – Hashem – then all his stubbornness will fall away.

When a person doesn’t know where he begins, he thinks he’s eternal. A stubborn person who wants to fix himself needs to return to his beginning , the awareness that only Hashem is the beginning, and only Hashem is the end.

To further elaborate, we know that there were two great miracles: the redemption from Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea. These two miracles represent two different lessons.

We were able to leave Egypt because of the plague of the firstborn because it reminded people that there are beginnings, a firstborn. The miracle of the splitting of the sea taught us a different lesson. The sea that was split was called Yam Suf – suf from the word sof, which means end. It taught us to see the end as well as the beginning. When we do both then even a stubborn person like Pharaoh would be moved to do teshuvah.

A stubborn person forgets where he began, and doesn’t believe his end will come. The way to repair stubbornness is by realizing that one’s beginning is continuous.

“Now is not the time to daven.”

When the Jewish people came to the edge of the sea, Moshe Rabbeinu began to daven to Hashem. Hashem said to him: “Why are you calling to Me? Speak to the nation and they will travel on.” The Sages remark on this that Hashem was telling him, “Now is not the time to daven.”

How could this not be the time to daven? They were in mortal danger! The answer is that since they had just left Egypt, they were reminded that there is a beginning – Hashem. When they came to the Yam Suf, Hashem was telling them that not only is He the Beginning, but He is also the End. “Now” was not the time to daven, because now there was no “I”. There was only Hashem.

Thus, Hashem said to Moshe that instead of davening,  they should go into the Yam Suf, because the Yam Suf was not the end. Only Hashem is the end, just as only He is the beginning.

Now we see the solution to being stubborn: remember your beginning, and remember your end.

A person might mistakenly assume that Hashem is helping him along his stubborn path, but if he is truthful, he will realize that his unhealthy stubbornness does not come from Hashem’s assistance, but from his own interests.

Going from Tefillah to Torah

This helps us understand something else as well. We know that the Jewish people were able to be redeemed from Egypt in the merit of tefillah: “And they cried out and their supplications ascended to G-d” (Shemos 2:23). The redemption from Egypt came to completion at the splitting of the sea, yet there, Hashem told them not to daven. This is puzzling.

After this, the Jewish people came to Sinai. They came from the level of tefillah to Torah. What caused the change in their madreigah?

Tefillah represents a beginning. For example, a person begins to daven because he is ill. He might still have a stubborn attitude, persisting about his needs. But with Torah, a person understands that he is part of a bigger picture far beyond himself. He sees what is before him and what is after him. He sees that he is only a part of something bigger, and that being stubborn is only holy when he understands that he isn’t a beginning and he isn’t an end, but part of a greater Whole.