I’ve always expected to fail. Not openly, but deep inside my silent places.
Perhaps its kinder to say, I never expected to succeed. This despite many achievements and awards and Atta girls. I never thought I was good enough or that my accomplishments measured up to what others did. The how or why is not important. I am not about assigning blame. The consequences create the story.
According to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator my rating is INFP, introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive. Technically that means I am an introvert, an intuit that receives information from the internal or imaginative world, someone who basis decisions on what they feel they should do and is inclined to improvise and explore alternative options. Simply put, a shy child seeking solitude, cringing when assigned to a group project, hanging out with someone who was a safe harbor and leaving the party early. It lowered the risk of having to engage in clever banter or being invited to the next party. Explicitly, a holy mess.
Yet, I felt a schizophrenic-like pull as if someone smart, playful and funny was waiting her turn to speak up. I confess there were occasions when I dared to let her dance on top of the piano.
Still, I found myself listening for the sound of a shoe as it whistled through the air and dropped with a resounding bang in the middle of my control. Waiting for the other shoe to drop distracted me from living in the moment. I hesitated to join in, protecting myself from a phantom self-doubt and hiding my light because I was ashamed and afraid that I could not live up to its brightness. I worried that there was something about me that, if discovered, would spell out across my forehead warning others to back away. I played poor me – what have I done to deserve so much rejection? It’s not my fault.
The paradox is that failing released me. I felt as if I were standing alone on the stage after messing up the words to the Star-Spangled Banner in front of the Marine Corps band. Ripe tomatoes and lemon meringue pies were hurling toward me as I faced the onslaught thinking, “the secret is out at last. I can stop humming the Great Pretender.”
To my credit, I never quit. Feeling the lion within, I would turn my face upward and roar “Are you ready for another round?” Then I would make amends, devise a new plan and find the place where the path branched. And the cycle would restart.
I can’t pinpoint the point of awakening. I think it came gradually wrapped in trust and acquiescence that God knew what He was doing and His plan was better than mine. I allowed myself to be vulnerable; to be the first to say I love you even when there were no guarantees that my feelings would rebound.
Being a scientist, my process was to predict, control and re-predict. So, when the door opened and Vulnerability, the confounding premise that it is better to just let it happen, was standing before me, I was stupefied. Chaos! My mind cried. But the more I thought about it and befriended Vulnerability, the more I realized that chaos predominates over calm control. Limitations are make-believe. Denying it is as laughable as a 3 year with icing smeared across his face saying he doesn’t like cake. I stopped objecting and started listening.
If I tried to describe vulnerability, it would turn out to be a litany of daily life. You can run, but you can’t hide. The places to hide are too often bottles. Prescription, alcohol, drug, diet, anti-aging or numbing pills. The unfortunate side effects are a numbness in your ability to feel the world around, to connect, relate, talk to each other and work things out. The cycle continues. Politics is the prime example of this in today’s dysfunctional world.
It is courageous to declare imperfection, to be kind to yourself first and then to others. It is an act of bravery to choose living with all your heart and soul in this scruffy world of overwhelming choices. While it often feels uncomfortable, it creates a bond with people because they are connecting with the authentic you rather than who you think you are supposed to be.
When my eyes finally opened, I understood how blessed I was to belong to a loving, caring and supportive family and how much I had to offer in return. This sense of belonging also brought a sense of worthiness. When you feel you are worthy, you are no longer afraid to be vulnerable.
The one thing we should teach the children of this and future generations, it is that they are worthy.
I am enough. So are you.
Let me know if any of this resonates with you.
Pun for the Day: My neighbor just got the part for Scrooge in a local performance. I’d love to go see him, but that play scares the Dickens out of me.