Just before the MAGIC OF TED WALLACE and his TOTAL DOMINANCE OF THE INTERWEBS happened last week, I was trying to make some sense of a few thoughts that all showed up in my head at the same time. They are related, but I am not sure how.
1. There are people who show up in life and change everything. I think everyone has a few. Some people, just by virtue of being exactly who they are, get into our wiring and shift stuff around, unlock parts of our humor or outlook or soul. It is not a matter of being highly advanced or evolved or enlightened or even the nature of the relationship. How they move through our world tilts it on its axis, and we are irrevocably different once we know them. I have been fortunate to have had three of these people in my life, and I know I have been that person once or twice, maybe more times, who knows? I would love to hear other people’s stories about the folks who showed up and shifted the world.
2. I make people uncomfortable. I suck at small talk, and always have (except for that time when I was drunk for three years). I am content being alone, and if you are not interested in talking about who you are and what is meaningful to you right now, we will not have much to discuss because I do not watch TV. Soul first, fart jokes and boobies later. I have always been this way, but teaching has made me more aware of it, and much more content with it. I am finding that many other teachers -particularly the ones who teach a lot- are like this. (The sucking at small talk part, not necessarily the TV part.) Some of us are more graceful about it than others. I can only hope I will be one of the graceful ones someday.
3. Paradox: the very traits that allow me to create a safe environment for my students are the same traits that make me unsafe for many people I have known, as a friend, a lover, a spouse. Being around someone who sees through your bullshit when you don’t want them to is extremely unsettling. In the context of a yoga class, it is great, though. A teacher who intuits which postures send you into chaos and leads you back in to yourself is a joy. Sometimes I am good at this, sometimes not. But having a person look right through you when you are being clever, knowing that you are just talking to fill space and feel better about yourself feels icky, even if that person loves you. So far, it has been my experience that those people who see through you (ok, see through ME) love me and think I am fine just the way I am. That is tough to accept. What about how smart and funny I am?
As a sidebar, I am lucky to have people around me who do find me safe. I am pretty much the Volvo of friends. Safest thing going, but a little high maintenance. Nine times out of ten you will have to call me, set up the lunch and get our friendship in for regular service, but I love you for who you are and will stick with you no matter what. When I think about the friends whom I trust and who trust me, there is, with very few exceptions, a common thread: we have taken car trips together. There is something about the forced intimacy of a long drive – nothing to do but talk, and no eye contact, like a confessional, that seeds great friendships.
Ah, so the way these are all related: it is all about willingness to transform. These are all riffs on the observer effect of the soul,* simply that the act of observing something changes it. Being seen and being known is uncomfortable partly because being seen necessitates change. It cannot be any other way. Clutch too tightly around your ideas about your world and yourself and you close the door on being known. It sounds simple, but sometimes things change gently, and sometimes your life blows up. Ultimately, being known, really, really known for who you are, is dependent upon acceptance that who you are could change at any moment just by letting some one in to see. The safety of acceptance, at its core, is embracing the unsafe and volatile nature of the self.
*It sounds way better to talk about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle here, and this is often how it is used in non-scientific circles, but it would be inaccurate, and that would make my science friends sad. No sad friends.
