I messed up.
Or at least it's my first impulse to say that.
I accidentally sent out an email that I didn't mean to,
And as soon as I realized I'd done that,
My inner Cruella stirred.
Darling,
She purred,
You always do things like this.
How could you be so careless?
What will people think?
Now,
This wasn't a bad email.
It was simply a draft.
And what bothered me was I hated revealing the messiness of my process.
I wanted to deliver only the polished product.
It didn't take me long to see the lesson in this.
We long to be the finished product,
The shiny version,
The best version.
And that's fine.
But challenges begin when we seek to be the finished product all the time.
Then we quit risking.
We quit putting ourselves out there and braving something new.
Because we can't bear the onslaught of those questions.
What if we fail?
What if we fall?
Who will see?
What will they think?
And it's not just the finished product we are after.
It's the perfect product,
Which we know is impossible,
And yet society and social media perniciously promise us otherwise.
I teach a class on race and gender.
And this year in my students' final speeches,
Many of the young women talked about how the expectation of perfection makes it exhausting to be a female.
This generation not only has to manage their faces and their lives in real time with the humans in front of them,
But they also have to manage the unending and ever-shifting demands of all the different platforms all over the world.
Is it any wonder this generation is haunted by anxiety?
Is it any wonder they,
And so many of us,
Long to be product?
Something certain,
Something finished,
Done,
Because then all will be well,
Right?
While that might feel safest,
Easiest,
The image that comes to mind is a mosquito caught in amber.
Is that really how we want to live?
A life frozen forever?
This hollow shell,
Powerless and stuck until the end of time?
Process,
On the other hand,
Moves.
It moves from now to next,
From is to will be.
Process,
As compared to product,
Is potential,
Possibility.
It is river,
Gathering all that is and carrying it along its way.
There is flow and energy,
Movement and power.
And yes,
Mess,
Because rivers can flood,
Just as they can be nothing but mud and muck,
Dust and detritus.
As I was writing this,
I learned a synonym for mess is chance medley.
And what a beautiful thought.
What if life is mess?
And what if mess is chance medley,
This collection of who knows,
And how long?
And what now?
And no going back.
I don't know about you.
But for me,
It's hard to say yes to that.
But if we do not want to live small and stuck,
We must risk mess.
And the possible hauntings of our very own Cruella's,
Whenever we put ourselves out there,
And things go sideways.
To be human,
We have to be willing to reveal that we are process and not product.
We have to be willing to not only reveal that,
But to revel in it.
So it is time.
Time to get our courage on.
Time to join the chance medley.
To jump into the what now and the what next.
With no going back.
Live light.
