Is it cliche yet, to write a blog post on your birthday? Asking for a friend.. no? Ok, good. Because 28 has been quite the year and I want to take a break from writing about variables which are highly correlated with negative body image to write about it. 28 started off with a surprise party with some of my closest people in attendance. Almost immediately after that though, I had to say good bye to one of those people. Then another one. And then another one. And then all of them. Between the months of March and August last year, I was in 26 different states. I quit my job, packed everything I own into my Subaru, and moved across the country to go back to school to work on something that I'm passionate about. I've seen landscapes that I had only dreamt about prior, I've cried over deadlines and term papers, and I've met quite a few amazing humans along the way.
Some of my favorite artists and writers use the metaphors that they come across in nature to guide their art. So when I was biking the other day and I looked up at the orchestra of trees swaying to the conductor of the wind, bending but not breaking, I knew what my 28th year was all about. I knew what it was that allowed me to experience my 28th year with life “dripping down my chin” as Nayyirah Waheed puts it. At 28, I learned how to put myself out there.
Brené Brown uses a quote from Teddy Roosevelt in her latest book where he describes the man in the arena "who's face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms; the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly..."
Now, I'm no President Roosevelt, but the metaphor works because when I was 28, I didn't only learn how to put myself out there, I learned and I tried to do it without armor. We walk around with the things that keep us up at night, the 'truths' that we tell ourselves, and the belief systems that we have, coated around us like metal plates designed to stop even the tiniest splinters of doubt and criticism. But, if I had walked into my advisor's office with my helmet and chest plate on, with 'not enough' scrawled across them.. if I had walked in like that when I was taking a risk and asking to be apart of her research lab, rather than waiting to be assigned by my program, who knows what would have happened. With that armor on she never would have been able to see my conductor, the wind that blows me, thing that bends me but doesn't break me, the thing that gets exposed every time I put myself out there without armor. My sensitive heart.
When I first arrived in Eugene I had to put myself out there. A lot. And each time that I did it, there was no one to tell me what to do, not what music to like, not how to act, and certainly not how to feel about any situation to help me fit in. It was raw and uncomfortable to expose my sensitive little heart to these strangers time after time. It was raw and uncomfortable, but it also worked.
In my 28th year, I used my sensitive heart to put myself out there because it's a whole lot easier than trying to figure out how you "should" be doing anything. It's better than feeling like you are only where you are because of other people, and it beats staying closed when you should have opened and going home afterwards with regret. This isn't to say that it's been easy each time. Or, that I've gotten good results every time either. Brené and Teddy both said it, you will fail. Not, you might fail. You will. I've put my sensitive heart out there and had it smeared back in my face, throw to the wind, bruised, bloodied, and broken. And that's only been in this year. But why do I do it? Why do I make myself nauseous from exposure? Why do I check in with myself about how I'm feeling about this? Why do I muster every ounce of courage that I can find swirling around my body from the very tips of my toes and use it to put my sensitive heart out there? Because. My sensitive heart is what makes me human.
I'm taking a class right now with a professor who is cynical and loves to spend most of class on his soap box. Obviously, I love the class. Because most of the time he is on his soap box he is going off about how someone with XYZ diagnosis is still a human and still deserves to be treated so. He questions the socially constructed view of the world, meaning he doesn't believe things should be the way they are just because that's how they always have been. He also works from something called a strengths-based prospective, meaning he starts with the good in someone and goes from there. He was talking about how some folks have a more mature, and quite possibly stronger connection between their prefrontal cortex (the rational decision maker of the brain) and their amygdala (the emotional and subconscious part). When the connection is like this, this person's emotions have a tendency to influence their behavior more, and they may come across as more emotional and sensitive. The amygdala/subconscious is actually collecting more information than your conscious brain is and it collects that information faster, so in all likelihood your subconscious has more insight about the situation than the rational-decision maker (prefrontal cortex) does. It's important to note that how much each of our amygdala's inform our behavior varies by person and development, so am I one of those people, with the stronger, more mature amygdala-prefrontal cortex connection? Probably not. That finding is actually from those who come from pretty adverse backgrounds. BUT, my professor referred to these folks as more deeply human, based on these grounds, because the way he sees it, thoughts come from anywhere and everywhere and change over time, emotions are more primitive and individualist.
My sensitive heart may not always like the 'way that you are talking to me', or may get offended faster than others, it may disappoint me at times when I wasn't planning on being disappointed, and it may have ignored your needs when the suffocating pressure of big emotion told me to run for the hills, but it also allows me to be who I am. It allows me to empathize with my clients and it allows me to create the feeling of home for those who seek it. My sensitive heart allows me to see humanity the way that I do and it allows me to love and connect with all of my people on a deeper level. Connection. I wear two hands around my neck clinging to each other, never letting go, to represent the deep and humanistic connection that keeps us alive in a world that is marring our faces with dust, blood, and sweat.
I picked up David Brooks' new book, The Second Mountain earlier this month and in the first part of it he discusses the transition that our culture has taken from the collectivist, "we're all in this together" attitude of the Great Depression and the WWII years, to the individualist, "I'm free to be myself" attitude of the counter culture. He claims that, with this shift and possible over shoot of individualist culture we are now plagued by loneliness, fear and tribalism. His hope and advice comes in the form of human connection. Last year I was writing a lot about choice and paying attention to the revolving doors of our internal monologue. This year, I'll probably continue with that, but I also plan to listen to my sensitive heart more and allow it to conduct my life the way it has this past year, in the most human way it can. Join me if you'd like.
