BLOG: Getting Comfortable With Messiness
SO many of us lead double lives. The truth is many of us could win an Academy Award for the role we play in the world.
We show the world our brilliance. From the outside, we absolutely shine.
And then there's our inner world. A world that feels messy and is fraught with struggle.
In that world there is all sorts of stuff. There's a non-stop critic who comes up with arguments and a slew of evidence to prove, once and for all, you are NOT ENOUGH. Not smart enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, not enough of a success.
Or worse, that you are broken, because you ____________________.
But DO NOT, under any circumstances, let anyone know, because they will judge. And that, my friend, is worse than death. So stiff upper lip, and deal with it. Alone.
The great tragedy of the role we play is that it prevents us from reaching out and asking for what we need.
But the truth is none of us has a perfect shine.
We ALL have our something, "big" or "little". And it is hard for us.
It just is.
Largely because we make it out to be so much worse in our heads.
We create such a pressure cooker of added tension when we keep it all bottled up and bubbling around.
Once we reach out, all that added tension is released.
Not only that, reaching out opens the flood gates for others to reach out, as well. And the collective pressure cooker, that we all live in starts to equalize.
There is a collective sigh of relief.
I witnessed this recently when a gregarious woman I know reached out to our tribe. Despite what I know to be true, I believed the shininess that is her role. I had no idea she was struggling. Or, wrapped up in my own stuff, I didn't even take in the cues.
She mustered her tremendous courage, and through her fear and trepidation, led by the belief that hers was a stigma-laden issue, she let us know what was going on for her.
And then she did one better, she asked for help.
Whatever fears that were rolling around in her head about judgment were released almost immediately as nearly EVERY OTHER person in the group, responded:
Yep. Me too/variation on the theme. I'll be there.
There was no shock. No judgment.
Instead, there was awe in the face of her courage.
What her vulnerability allowed us to do was to see her, hear her, value her through additional layers and added richness.
We all have our something.
Her vulnerability allowed us all to witness our own humanity and breathe a giant sigh of relief in the knowledge that we are not alone in our struggles.
Whatever it is that we are dealing with, the struggle is what it is to be human.
At the most profound level, it allowed us to connect. And in that connection we tap into a source of energy that is far greater than we are as individuals.
When we are plugged into that, we are simultaneously at peace and energized.
We are at our best - both compassionate and inspired.
We are in awe.
It is precisely our messiness that connects us so deeply.
It gets us to that sublime place of peace and energy, compassion and inspiration.
And awe.
The practice is to get comfortable with it.
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