Tag: dance

Awkwardly shamelessly human

So much of every day we do what we do and we don’t what we don’t because of a “supposed to” feeling. Many of these arbitrary standards, none of us even like anymore, but we don’t dare color outside the lines about them.

Most of us don’t dance when we want to dance. Most people don’t even want to dance when our bodies are happy or emotional. Because you don’t. You just don’t. You’re supposed to save dancing for where it belongs and then be one of those enviable people who can switch it on.

Most of us answer “pretty good, thanks” when we for sure aren’t pretty good, thanks, because this is just what you do. Because letting your lip quiver and eyes go misty is strange and uncomfortable and friendship is not what friends are for.

Most of us wear the clothes we’re supposed to wear, order the drink we’re supposed to like, keep the job we’re supposed to have, say the things we’re supposed to say, stay alone like we’re supposed to stay alone.

If rewards and punishments and hierarchies and shame and norms and rules and expectations all disappeared, would you sing more? Would you hug more? Would you enjoy your food more? Would you jump in a lake with your clothes on more or at least lay on a beach more? Would you share more and ask more? Would you slow down more and put your phone away and actually rub your dog’s belly for more hours? Would you ask for what you truly want more? Would you laugh more? Would you maybe even do that 6-year-old thing again where you say “Hey, can we be friends?” and suddenly find that the human life isn’t quite so lonely without all the shame?

What if doing what you’re supposed to do and don’ting what you’re supposed to don’t is suffocating you? What if humans aren’t supposed to robot?

When do we get to meet shameless you?

Photo by Lyssi

~

Want some more reminders for your awkwardly shamelessly human journey?

Be the curly chip

Tortilla chips are made in a factory.

Factories make things Just-Right.

On a conveyor belt, the sheet of dough is cut by triangle-shaped molds, each mold identically sized and shaped, so that each chip will come out identical: Just-Right.

Somewhere along the way, the chips fall in a fryer. A few of the chips get “weird”–some folding over on themselves. some attaching inseparably to another chip, and some inexplicably curling into a perfect little curly chip.

Technically, these are defects. The factory and its machines were designed to spit out the Perfect-Product, millions upon millions of identical chips, day after day, each one Just-Right. The way they’re “supposed to be.”

But when the bag of chips finds its way into your kitchen and is torn open, the curly chips don’t get picked out and tossed. In fact, I bet if we took a survey, we’d find that the curly chips become the prized chips. The ones that look so beautifully unique. The ones that for some silly reason just warm your heart by the sheer different-ness of them.

Life . . . we sort of grow up in tortilla chip factories. Quality control tells us we need to match the other chips. To follow the same life path, make the “right” choices, and value the “right” things. Even that there’s a “right” or “wrong” color or shape. That to be, say, and do DIFFERENTLY is to be DEFECTIVE. Expectations.

So . . . you could fit the cookie-cutter mold. You could aim for IDENTICAL.

Or . . . you could do your own unique dance in the fryer and find your own perfectly UNIQUE shape.

“I don’t fit in.” “I’m not normal.”

That’s okay. If anything, that’s good. Fitting the mold isn’t a real value.

Be the curly chip!

20200524_135609

Just. Be. You.