I have put off writing this because I have been waiting for the perfect message to form in my head. The message where I say ground breaking things and I blow your mind with some unique life view that you haven’t thought of yet. Where I share wisdom that is profound yet utterly simple. I have been putting this off until I felt elegant on paper and had the stature of someone less ordinary and more…accomplished. Enlightened. Grand.
This idea of waiting for the “right time” goes against the advice I have heard over and over – There is no right time to start. Just pick up the pen and paper or open the laptop, and begin. Some days it will suck and the struggle to form a sentence will bury you in self-loathing, while other days you will find a flow and ease. It takes time, they say. It takes routine and practice. Anne Lamott would agree. In Bird by Bird, Lamott expresses that a “shitty first draft” is to be expected. “All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.” So why wait? Why put off my writing any longer?
Self doubt. That is why. I read the platforms of others who have been at this writing game for awhile. Quickly I dive into the free fall:
You don’t sound like them. You are too ordinary. What they have is unique.
They are professionals. They are experienced. Life qualified.
What do you have to say that actually matters?
I do not have all my ducks in a row, all my shit dialed in, or profound life statements that will shake the ground you walk on and open you to radical new ways of thinking. I am still in the mess of life. I am still picking up pieces from my brokenness. I am still tangled up and working on unpacking a knot of pain, worry, resentment, insecurity, fear. I am taking many breaks along my path and often they are spent having meltdowns and temper tantrums. I have held back from writing and putting my ideas out there because I am still too humanly flawed. Too ordinary. What I have to share is in the messy, not out of it – not packaged up nicely with the perfect life-lesson bow wrapped around it looking wise and insightful.
And yet, this morning I pushed past all that doubt and my want for the perfect message. I chose to write anyways. Here I am with my scattered life toolkit to see what happens. This change of thought to dive in unpolished is the result of some late night reading – The Great Work Of Your Life by Stephen Cope.
Cope reflects on the lives of both everyday people and of well-known individuals. He unveils the idea that regardless of your stature, everyone has a journey to self discovery and to finding your gift, otherwise known as finding your dharma. This process of discovery will be different for each of us because we all have a unique footprint with variables in our lives that make the pursuit different. There is no one-size-fits-all template to follow.
Our size and how we show up in the world is a conflict many of us face. Cope explains that size is one of the biggest challenges when finding your dharma. He notes that, “Grandiosity and devaluing both represent unrealistic thinking about possibility. Grandiosity motivates us to try to be bigger than we could possibly be. Devaluing makes us think of ourselves as smaller than we actually are.”
We don’t need to act bigger and more grand than we truly are, because that will stop us from showing up authentically, nor is there reason to hide or minimize yourself either. Believing your worth and standing tall in your shoes is too important. And so we find this need for balance in where you rest among the bigness and the smallness of it all. Regardless, your size does not determine your value or what you offer this world with your gift, your dharma.
So how does this relate to my writing? To believe that my life experience is not enough to share with the world is devaluing. On the flip side, I am not going to try and write a self-help book just yet because that would be too big, too grandiose for what I know. There is a balance in choosing to trust and share what I have to say through writing, while making sure that I don’t begin to pretend to be more than who I truly am. I want to honor my life lessons by lending them out to the world to hear, for whomever chooses to listen, without falling into the trap of thinking I need to mold or shift my voice to conform to what I think people want to hear.
I am not seeking to be grand. I am seeking to reflect and continue learning, to share my vulnerabilities and build a community of thoughtfulness and relatability. Sharing my lessons and ideas on life is nothing more than releasing them to float out in the world for whomever they might resonate with. Nothing more. Nothing less. Not small. Not big. Just ordinary. I no longer wait for perfectionism and profound enlightenment so that my words might become more powerful or pretty. I start, right here, where I am. In the storms and in the triumphs, I am here.
I may not be Oprah with a Rolodex of intelligent and enlightened friends to bring to this table of conversation, but I do have 36 years of experience being a human. Somewhere in these 36 years the messy and the pretty paint a story of value and depth. As I put my humanness out there, imperfect and in the moment of learning, my intention is to show that it’s okay to show up in our current place of being, whether it be celebrating, defeated, confused, curious, hopeful, angry….wherever it may be, because in each of those moments we all have something worthy of sharing and that is useful to hear. Even if what we share is, what the actual fuck is going on in my life!?! There is value even in that because sharing honestly and being vulnerable is what ignites connection and acts as a guide for more people to look inward and check-in with themselves. It reminds us that we are not alone and other people are having similar experiences. What we share doesn’t have to be perfect or profound. Be imperfect. Be raw. That is what I am learning. That is what I will be sharing. We just need to show up and be human no matter if we are ordinary or Oprah. It all matters.
Bright White Canvas 