I had lunch with a couple of friends the other day and as I was leaving to head back to work, a song came on that I’d never heard before.  I’ve been on a big audio book kick so I haven’t been listening to satellite much.  Regardless.  This song stopped me in my tracks.  My heart pounded as I heard the lyrics—and it was one line that caught me.  I felt something absolutely transcendent in me.  I was fully, entirely connected to that moment and everything my body was doing—everything my body wanted and how it felt.  This is the music that comes from raw, honest, pure feeling and expression without filtering.  Like I always do when something catches me like that, I started looking up everything I could about it when I got back to my office.  They lyrics, the artist, who this person was, listening to the song again and again.  As the story of the song consumed me, I asked myself something: have I ever told a story with that much feeling and honesty as in these three and a half minutes?  Yes.  But have I shared it?  No.  Those are the words I still keep for myself, afraid of what people will think.  The life I’ve created is so separate from what I show, and I only let a few people in—once you’re in, I’m an open book, but before that, I’m giving you the professional me.

Being vulnerable takes tremendous courage and skill.  I’ve honed that practice over the years with over 1,700 posts here plus what I have on social media.  And for me it is a practice.  I’ve been trained to protect myself and I’ve opted to protect myself based on experience—while I share the true stories of my life here, they are absolutely chosen and tailored before I share them.  But I’ve learned that the real connection and beauty in life isn’t protected–It’s fully exposed.  The things we do to protect these most precious parts of us or our experiences end up suffocating them.  What I thought was protection and self-preservation ended up taking the life out of me.  It wasn’t the real version of me—I always felt like I needed to be edited, that I shouldn’t show it all.  But that isn’t real.  That’s a half-truth and the full truth is that makes me feel like a fraud to fear sharing the whole thing.  I’ve been pretty open here, there really isn’t much I’ve censored, but I’ve tailored the message in an effort to make it palatable and relatable.  There comes a point where we simply accept the story as it is and we just tell it.  We hope there is a connection from it but we no longer try to force it to relate to everyone.  Not every experience we have is a grand universal truth—I know there are certain things people will NOT experience.  Truly, I’m not talking universal truth, I’m talking about the stories we make fit into something else-0mitting details or changing them to how we wished they had gone instead of what happened.

So. I realized that I need some time to get in touch with the raw talent in me, the creativity that I feel surging at all times that I don’t know if I will ever be able to keep up with it because it’s a never ending torrent of thought I try to catch with a net.  I love that feeling and instead of trying to funnel it into one thing, I need to let it be all things.  It’s all connected in who I am and I am certainly more than one thing I show.  I need to let it be what it is just as we all need to let ourselves be who we are.  There is absolute magic when we let ourselves be seen like that.  The freedom.  Yes, that level of out-there-ness can be terrifying, frankly it is terrifying, but there is nothing like taking that chance to walk in our full truth and authenticity only to discover that we can fly there. We are always supported on that venture.  We are always welcomed in the space between potential and reality.  Sometimes we feel it and are lucky enough to put it all out there, and it catches like fire in people.  Sometimes we do it on our own, sometimes it takes hearing a song to remind us of how much further we can go in sharing our humanity.  I want to be a flame and I want to fan the flames in others.  I want to dance in the fullness of my creation, content and secure that my message will get where it needs to even if it doesn’t get to everyone.  I’m not a fraud for having a façade—we all do.  I’m a fraud if I know it’s there and I keep wearing it.  The holes are there, so there is no point in keeping it whole.  Don’t fight who we are and the mask is never there.