Peeling Back the Surface
Sharing our messy, perfectly imperfect selves – By Stacey Huget
How often are we surprised to discover that someone we believe to be happy and easygoing is actually deeply troubled – by the tension in their marriage, a struggle against addiction, the loss of a loved one, or a sea of financial worry? These are the storms of living, but we’ve somehow learned to project (and expect) only calm skies.
The growing chasm between the paper-thin surface of our lives and the true depths of our human experience is disturbing, reckless almost. There is an apparent ease-and-glide in all our pretending and covering up – a skirting of difficult conversations and bare-ass vulnerability and awkward exchanges of compassion. It isn’t just isolating us from one another – but from ourselves as well.
As a culture, we’ve learned to conform to some pretty bazaar expectations as to what is courteous and customary. Take, for example, that ubiquitous “how are you?” question we routinely ask of one another – and just as routinely give and accept bland, non-answers of fine or good or okay as if all that mattered was the completion of this obligatory conversational nicety.
What conceivable purpose does this exchange serve – except perhaps to confirm that we are slaves to convention?
What do fine and good and okay even mean – beyond a kind of shorthand for “let’s get this out of the way and move on”?
Move on to what, I wonder – to appearing to be connected?
We are anesthetizing one another with all this sanitary short-hand. Brushing aside the bits of us we don’t want to risk sharing, learning to disbelieve another’s genuine interest, keeping things safe and easy and quick. All the while, closing off the valves to each other’s empathy and curiosity and compassion.
I say … let the words tumble out, let the tears flow, let the tiny rivers of mascara run.
Because the thing is: sometimes we’re really NOT fine or good or okay.. Sometimes, there are issues weighing us down around relationship or money or work or health. We’re carry them around as lumps in our throat, as stones in our bellies – choking down our anxiety or rage or heartbreak.
I say … breathe, share, release.
I recently met with a group of counselling friends and after our first layer of fine and good and okay we got down (as we do) to what was really going on for us. A LOT as it turned out an hour or so later.
These judgments we’re afraid of – that we’re needy, messy, less than ‘perfect’ – aren’t so frightening when we realize they’re true, at least some of the time, for ALL of us. What is it that’s so scary about the truth of being human – and how can we ever hope to thrive in a world that conspires to keep it hidden away?
The result of this exchange: stronger connections, emotional expression, the give-and-take of genuine empathy and compassion, new insights, joy. The feeling within us that we are all human, okay, rooted.
And yes, there was a tiny river or two of mascara.
Now, granted, we don’t always have the time to answer the “how are you?” question in detail, nor is such an exchange appropriate in every setting, nor are all our relationships built on the kind of trust that deep honesty requires.
But what if we committed to approaching that question – whether we’re asking it or answering it – with a tad more presence and interest and heart?
What if, instead of a quick glance and mumbled How are you? we held eye contact and asked How are you really, I’d like to know?
Instead of good or fine or okay, we held their gaze and said “Hmm, quite a lot actually. Do you have a few minutes?
And what if we had a few minutes? A few moments of genuine interest, suspended expectations, whole-hearted presence for another human being?
This isn’t conversational rocket science. It’s the back-to-the-basics stuff of humanity, and it’s important.
Why? Because it soothes the soul-destroying effects of a society that can be, well, punishing. Not only are most of us confronted with the sometimes harsh realities of life – we’re also exhausted trying to resist being sucked into competing, into loathing our so-called imperfections, into racing after some false image of “having arrived”.
The very thing that would lighten our load is the thing we’ve trained ourselves not to do: connect, share, listen, understand, support.
Who told us to do this thing?
We get to choose the expectations we set for ourselves. Surely, we can choose authenticity, radical honesty, and deep connection with others – not as we think we need to appear to be, but as we actually are.
Why wouldn’t we express what’s going on for us, really? Why wouldn’t we want to share our experience, be it of joy or of grief, with our fellow travelers on this earth?
These judgments we’re afraid of – that we’re needy, messy, less than ‘perfect’ – aren’t so frightening when we realize they’re true, at least some of the time, for ALL of us. What is it that’s so scary about the truth of being human – and how can we ever hope to thrive in a world that conspires to keep it hidden away?
Call me nosy or a sap or an idealist … call me whatever you like, but tell me this: How are you, really?
