So, I’m going to be totally honest right now. I have no idea where today’s blog is going to go. My mind is a bit jumbly. Conventional wisdom says I should free write somewhere private, then condense those ideas into a post that I have thoroughly edited and proofread before posting for the world to see. I laugh in conventional wisdom’s face. My readers don’t come to this site for things like high quality writing or correct punctuation, though, I’m not entirely sure why people read this stuff.
(First, before I try to go into depth about anything, there is an effing fly in my room driving me batshit.)
This week has been sort of awesome for me in strange existential ways. First, I started writing again. I’m not being a word churning demon, but I’m producing again. It feels glorious. I feel like I have less worth and less interesting when I’m not writing. I know, it is crazy, but this is thirty years of deep rooted crazy I’m trying to conquer. It will take some time.
Mostly though, I have spent a lot of time thinking about worth, vulnerability, genuineness, and image. It kinda got started by this. Click the link. CLICK THE LINK. It made me weep but in a good way.
I’ve said it before, people are starved for genuine connection. We spend so much of our lives worrying about image, avoiding vulnerability, and trying to be something someone else decided they should be that we get lost in the mix. I spent all of my adult life, until a year and a half ago, being so terrified people would see the real me and hate it I kept myself tightly contained. It was hard to get close to me, and I never felt worthy. I constantly felt like a fraud.
Hey, guess what, most people feel like that.
It makes me so said that we live in a society so obsessed with normal and fitting in that no one feels right in their own skin. Our culture encourages to avoid risking vulnerability and rewards people for being able to sublimate themselves into being some strange norm. We think anything less than perfect is unworthy.
Some people are mostly normal, though I’m not entirely sure what that means. If it who you are, rock it. If you worry about small things like the kind of car you drive or whether your kid’s hair is perfect because of some strange ideal, you are growing a deep seed of self-loathing. Let go. People will always judge us. Not everyone will like us. Everyone liking us or thinking we fit into some ideal won’t make us happy, loving ourselves will.
I looked at my mom the other day and said “I think advertising is the root of all that is wrong with American culture.” She just rolled her eyes and told me she didn’t want to have that conversation with me. Okay, I don’t strictly believe the statement. It is a bit melodramatic. I do think there is some truth in it though.
We are inundated with messages about how if we buy something we are somehow better. No one will love us if we don’t have perfectly white teeth. This sleek, sophisticated, beautiful woman buys great gifts. If you shop at these stores, you will be like her. If you buy your kids the right toys/shoes/clothes/technology they will be smarter/higher achievers/ love you more. At least the Axe commercials don’t even try to pretend they aren’t selling a ridiculous idea. These things don’t make you better. They don’t add to your worth. Only you can add to your worth.
I do see some amazing rays of hope. The internet fell in love with the cop who bought the homeless man some boots. I saw one of the major channels is having an awards show for people who gave. We are moving back to a society that values things like basic human goodness. Celebrate the happy and the goodness. Every time you link a good story you encourage that trend. Every small act of kindness counts. Everyone counts.
Okay. I think I’m done rambling.
Geeks a Geeking