I love being around people who are creating. I love witnessing self-expression (see all previous mentions of Project Runway). I love how there is no scarcity in creativity. It just keeps giving and giving and multiplying and inspiring and quadrupling and compounding.
I think it was Benner who wrote that the closer we get to God the more unique we each look, which has not always been the thrust of “religion” so much, has it? Conformity is comforting on some level, I guess. Conformity and control are bedfellows. This is why Benner’s line is so divine. The more we grow and become, spiritually, the more we look like ourselves, not like everyone else. The more we spend time with Christ, the more our True Self emerges. Let this be a sign unto you. If the institution you frequent is more invested in your conformity than your creativity, beware.
I see this as one of my main responsibilities as a parent. To help my kids find their voice. To not allow my own fears to push conformity on them, but to celebrate their unique ways of seeing the world. I want to teach them that they are reliable observers of the world. Their take matters. I want to celebrate their perspective, their way of saying and doing. I want them, having been in our family, to be more them than they ever would have been otherwise. I want to be a midwife for their particular brand of being.
Isn’t it inspiring to be around someone who is finding their voice, using their voice. Isn’t inspiring to witness true, original creativity. To be with someone who is really unconventional, not for the sake of being belligerent in any way, not purely for the sake of eccentricity (though eccentricity can be exciting), but for the sole purpose that something must come out of her. Something is dying to be birthed through her hands and her eyes and her way of seeing. And so she gives way to it.
At 8:00 this morning, I sat three cars deep at a green light. Everyone was dead still. No one moved. Do you know why? Because an ambulance, sirens and lights blaring, was coming up behind us. Everyone froze so the ambulance could snake between us, into the oncoming lane, and through the intersection. We yielded.
The etymology of yield is “giving way to a physical force” (from the 1600s) and also “to pay, serve, worship, sacrifice” (15th century). The whole scene struck me. We were giving reverence to the situation. It wasn’t just about urgency, though it was about urgency, too. It was about due respect. It was a sacrificial (we all had to wait) giving way.
Some of you will not have any context for this post. It won’t register deep down. But some will feel it in their bones because they have a longing for self-expression that is dormant or denied, either of which is heavy.
I can’t quit these words from Elizabeth Gilbert: “Any talent that we have but do not use becomes a burden.” Isn’t that the truth. When we don’t yield to that thing that wants to be born through us, we get heavy, sluggish, trudgy, sad, tired, irritable.
Some of us are at the intersection, and the great sirens of self-expression are going off behind us. Will we give way to the physical force of our own creative urgency? Will we yield to the thing that is coming for us?
I don’t care what it is: baking or building, painting or pottery, sewing or singing. Do the thing. DO. THE. THING.
Do not keep driving, mindlessly, through this intersection. Pay attention to what’s trying to get your attention. Stop, give way to this physical force coming up behind you, yield sacrificially. And then, with all the gumption you can summon, drive like a bat out of hell toward your talent.
I need it. What you have to offer this world. I need to hear it, taste it, read it, see it on Instagram. I need your offering. I need to fill up on it. It catapults me toward mine. It increases the flow in all of us. Your creativity and self-expression and freedom of flow show me how it’s done. So even if you can’t give yourself the permission to do it for yourself yet, do it for me. Do it for the little darling who is staring up at you.
Let your gorgeousness off the leash.
(And then post a picture of it on Instagram so I can swoon.)
I love you and I believe in you,
Leeana
