Knitting a Blanket

I can see it all very clearly, how your hair never seems to have a bad dad and your family never fights. You do all sorts scary things with out even blinking an eye. Standing up in front of thousand of people and doing what you love, like it is nothing, with ease and grace and humor. So why then is it all so hard for me? Why do I feel cripplingly anxious at the thought of presenting my ideas at a meeting, and why do my husband and I struggle to even negotiate kitchen clean up? Based on my assessment I clearly don’t have what it takes to do what you do? I can see how easy it is suppose to feel because it is clearly so easy for you. Therefor, I should not even try. If it is not as easy as you make it look than I am clearly not meant to be doing it.

The comparison is an easy one to make. We use what we have available, make an assessment, and there it is in front of us the undeniable truth. This is the business of comparing other people’s outsides with our insides. We see the well curated and quaffed version of others and assume that this is the only data point. It is the version of people we are allowed to see and encouraged to present. The media doesn’t show us Demi More’s stretch marks and tearful self doubt, when they put her naked pregnant body on the cover of Vanity Fair. They made pregnancy look effortless and sexy. Social Media has taken the marketing baton and run the extra lap. Now each of us has the chance to curate a life we want to present to the world, and we get instant feedback for our efforts. Post a cute picture of your family playing a board game you get likes and comments galore. Can any imagine video taping that knock down drag out you had with your 15 year old about cleaning up the “F-ing” kitchen? That might get you a whole different reaction. Do they have a button for “I don’t want to see that”, “She is crazy”? Because not only do we not want to share out messing insides, but people don’t want to see them. So we take the data points we have access to and we draw conclusions. These become the stories we tell ourselves when our thoughts are churning round and round. The stories that feed the “I am not enough” gremlin, and the parts of us that “know” self flagellation is the only tool for interpersonal growth.

But what if we show just some people a little more of our insides? What if we took a moment to share something about ourselves that was still half-baked? What if we revealed our messy first thing in the morning hair to a few safe people to practice really being seen. I will bet that feeling seen, known, and loved because of our messiness not despite it, might become a little addictive. We might realize how much energy we spend putting on the mask rather than soaking up love. Despite the norms, most people crave a few genuine moments of being known and knowing someone else. If we can find a few of those moments, maybe we can begin to knit them together into a blanket that we can wrap around ourselves for protection and warmth when the gremlins arrive and threaten to put us out in the cold, because they will, they always do.