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| Too Subtle (CAI 2019) |
As I prepare to attend an International Women's Day Conference where there are many speakers I find interesting and admire, I have a confession to make: I secretly hate
inspirational talks.
I know it’s
a bit perverse and I’m probably jealous of the amazing people, but I have a habit of letting inspirational
talks shame me. They highlight my inadequacy. I am not inspirational like them. All my
promise, all my potential, everything I’ve done to learn and grow and figure
out life’s challenges, all my failures that I call learning experiences; all I know and long to share with the world, is not
much, after all. Not polished. Not finished. Not interesting. Not coherent. Not enough.
Maybe we could
organize a conference of the women no one ever asks to speak, because their
stories seem suspiciously common. Because they are not accomplished enough, not
fabulous enough, haven’t managed to come out the other side of their challenges
and put together a tidy TED-inspired story of how they grew and what they know and what
they did that was so important.
Maybe I’d rather hear mumbled, uncertain snippets from women who are still mired and mucking around. Women who have accomplished staying
alive today and doing all the things that needed doing to keep their lives
afloat and take care of the people they care about, despite a bevy of personal
challenges. I want to hear how they find
ways to be sane and loving, when the world is so terrible. I want to see how
they grab and protect moments of creative inspiration despite a life filled
with chores. I want to hear how they sometimes manage to break through the
resentment of having all the work and none of the glory. I want to understand
how they keep believing in themselves even when no one else believes in them,
when the world tells them there’s nothing in them to believe in, anyway, and that situation has not changed despite their best efforts. I’d
like to understand how they manage their chronic pain and constant, underlying
anxiety. How they get back in touch with their bodies and learn to love them,
or fail to do so despite years of trying. I want to know how they cope with never finishing anything they start, but plugging away at it anyway, or how they reconcile themselves to give it up. I would like to understand, too, how
they feel about the Inspirational Women being Fabulous until
common efforts begin to feel pointless, since they can’t be held up like a polished
diamond for admiration. Are they inspired?
Maybe,
instead of seeking inspiration in the exceptional, what I really crave is to feel inspired to hold myself, exactly as I am, as special and important. To feel
that I’m not alone. To admire other messy, “unaccomplished” women who are
scraping together their own purpose amidst a life dedicated to others, in a
world designed to keep us from knowing our true godliness.
I think I want to
believe that I’m not a failure because no one cares about my experiences. I
want to feel like I’m one of many on a journey that is important, somehow, even
if I never come out the other side. I deeply wish to believe that my lack of audience
reach doesn’t mean I’m a waste.
But, I
suspect that craving for consolation doesn’t deserve respect. Let alone a whole conference.
And, anyway,
no one would come.
And also, I would not speak there.
I am not so jealous of the Fabulous Women because they get to speak and be heard. I am jealous because they get to be so brave and motivated that they can do it. I can't remember the last time I felt that way, like I could tackle something like wrapping my knowledge into an interesting present for the world and delivering it with gusto. I can't remember the last time that the thought of doing something really interesting and probably very useful didn't feel like an invitation to failure, an imposition on energy, something I probably can't get done before life drags me backwards three steps. When I see the Fabulous Women and I know, they are actually fabulous, it makes me notice what I am, now. Where I am, now. What I can be, now. And I'm not satisfied. The best I can do is not good enough for me. I should be able to step up, and in. Life keeps sending me setbacks like curve balls I really should have seen coming, and I'm not sure I have the disposition for it. When I go somewhere to get inspired by the people who overcame that, I feel tired. Too tired to even admire what they do.
I am of diminished capacity. I am limited in body and mind in ways that make my spirit lose interest altogether. I may never understand the most fundamental things that everyone else seems to get. And I have no way to help anyone else with anything they are experiencing, because following the disjointed path of my breadcrumbs would try the patience of a saint. It has. And that will likely be the only way to get what I had to give, in the end. It wasn't what I hoped for.
But maybe today will be different. Maybe today, the inspiration will spark instead of snuff. Maybe today I will walk away with energy I didn't have before. So I go.
Because hope is the only path to peace that feels compelling.
