I’m stubborn. Sometimes it is for the smallest and most stupid things and sometimes it means something more. Some people tell me it is due to my German heritage. Some say it is due to my upbringing. Maybe it is just a poor character trait. Whatever the reason I have had two standoffs.  One was for a shrimp bowl that I won (and rightfully so I might add), and the other was for some leftover pea soup that I needed to take care of but just could not bring myself to do it. Let’s start with the shrimp bowl. It was a few years back and as I write this I cannot remember how it even began. That is how stupid it was – no recollection of the real events that led up to it. Just a memory of me being stubborn but winning in the end.

The shrimp bowl was a bowl of shrimp in the fridge that ended up starting to smell since it had gotten pushed to the back of the fridge. Perhaps it was my suggestion to put it outside until garbage day. It ended up outside and there it sat for about 3 months. Yes, three whole months. It, the shrimp, ended up drying out and adhering to the bowl. I refused to take care of it as it was not my bowl of shrimp. Friends would stop by and ask about it. I would reply that it was a shrimp standoff. Why was I so adamant about not cleaning up this measly bowl of shrimp? I have no idea except for the fact that it wasn’t my responsibility and maybe I found some sort of amusement in seeing how long this would go on. It was cleaned up by the person responsible and I felt validated. Stubbornly validated.

Flash forward to this year. I made a batch of pea soup for a guy who hates peas but likes pea soup. This was also Easter weekend so there were plenty of other leftovers to be eaten as well. Needless to say only half of the soup got eaten, a week had passed, and it needed to be tossed. Before I knew it another week had passed and somehow it had become a month. I looked in the fridge and this leftover container (a giant pot really) had somehow got forgotten and pushed into fridge oblivion.

I knew this needed to be dealt with but I did not want to open this container to face the possible smell & to find out what the soup had morphed into. I tried to tell myself that I shouldn’t have to deal with it. I made it for someone else. He should deal with it. I did say that I would deal with it earlier so had already committed to it. Plus, he couldn’t deal with gross smells. This was my gross mess to deal with. I procrastinated since I figured I would just throw out the whole pot in the garbage and be done with it in one easy step. So I waited and finally took care of it today. Roughly three months later the pea soup is finally gone (thank goodness the pot managed to be saved).

What does any of this really mean? If people would just deal with the things that they didn’t want to deal with sooner than later, we could all move a little bit closer to where we want in life. It might just be having a clean & more spacious fridge, getting to use a pot again that had been out of commission for 3 months in fridge oblivion, or it might be finding a new job and doing something that makes you happier. As I’ve gotten older and possibly matured I have discovered that there is a difference between being stubborn and being opinionated. You can have opinions & values that you want to hold tight to and be a person of integrity, but when one is stubborn for the sake of being stubborn, nobody wins.