My friend said this to me over the phone recently:
“You carry yourself with authority.”
We are constantly on a similar path of seeking growth and enlightenment together and have been since we’ve known each other. He approached me in middle school gym class one day as we both sat on the bleachers, staring out at everyone else playing. He struck a conversation with me that has never really ended and I’ve appreciated his willingness to be honest and curious with me about the world after all this time. I trust his perspective of me.
I can’t get those words out of my head.
I’d been lamenting my struggle with the way my confidence feels it’s perceived sometimes. I can’t quite get a good read on how people are taking my words and I feel very humble on the inside, just earnest and direct about what I do and don’t know, and I’m not afraid to make mistakes if that open and transparent process helps normalize the growth process.
Yet, sometimes people do seem to feel threatened by my unwavering personality and it stings. It’s where I’ve been manipulated many a time - that darned value system of mine that places the growth of others before my own, confidently.
My buddy catches me. He sees me. He knows how willing I am to let my greatness go unseen and pushes me to make sure I share it with the world.
I’m in an uprooting phase in my life. I’ve been here before. Frankly, I think all of life is grief and transition.
But something feels different this time. Like my entire worldview is turning on its head. More like a world tilting on its axis a full 360 degrees. I have my core and I’m learning to trust it. I have great instincts. I almost said good - they’re great. I don’t trust them enough
After several - I mean S-E-V-E-R-A-L - hard fucking blows the past few years, I’m finally settling into the reality that maybe I really am a leader.
I hate it. I hate the idea of leadership, though I understand it’s necessity in a world that’s just not ready for horizontal relationships and equity. I’ve been fighting it since I can remember.
I’d call my dad a hypocrite in front of his martial arts classes when he’d be - you guessed it - a hypocrite. I’d be reprimanded. I’d gather my youth group friends in one room to get them all talking and learning about each other’s very different lives. I’d be the glue that held them together, it felt like. I’d sit in the lounge of my sophomore floor and as an assigned campus ministry coordinator, intentionally make myself available for friendship and talking about anything, in earnest. I was praised as radical, a leader of leaders. Not just a leader - an example of how to lead. I dropped out. Whenever I hit the stage, I could feel all energy on me. I was told I had an ability to do that that was admirable. I resented it because I felt one dimensional and it burnt me out. In management positions, I’ve sought to even out the power, uplifting and helping people see their capable selves, not at all unlike me. I’ve been praised and then relied on for outputting more leadership and other times, been mistrusted for being a genuine person with no hidden agenda.
There are more days that I can feel how very not ready the world is for people like me, yet in the quiet moments when no one’s watching, people will engage me.
I never could quite make out what it was I felt people wanted with me. I show up in earnest to the spaces I’m in, I’m awkward but consistently there, I listen as much as I speak, and I care without feeling the need to be showy about it. In fact quite the opposite. I hate when people can see my good deeds. I just want to do a deed out of responsibility and kindness and to motivate others to keep doing the same. I do not desire the attention or Nobel Prize for it, in earnest. I would resent an award, honestly. My reward is in feeling human.
Nevertheless, when I speak, people listen. Perhaps it’s because I’ve studied leadership and was birthed into an environment in martial arts that built me into the four tenants my father had pinned up on the wall.
Patience. Respect. Modesty. Honesty.
I am blatantly offended when people do not exude nor work on these qualities in themselves. They are what makes a good human and a good leader.
Spend more than 10 minutes with me and you’ll hear me passionately rant about some leader somewhere I resent for sucking at their role.
I carry myself with authority. I’m starting to know what that means now.
Because I resent this reality so, yet see it all the same, I’m with the loners in every room I’m in. Occasionally I find myself stumbling into the popular kids table because oops, someone read me incorrectly and liked my vibe, but I cannot count how many “…you saw that, right?” conversations I’ve had with all us weirdos that see everything. We stay quiet because we’re wise and we’re read as too sweet to harm a fly in an infantile way, too ignorant to notice or perhaps too stupid in an ableist way, or too above it all to care, or even worse, too disruptive to the nauseating fog in the room. Everything that’s going wrong that no one wants to talk about? That’s us.
We’re the weirdos on the bleachers watching everyone else play. Bet that when we do play, it’ll be one hell of a game. An underdog’s game.
These people? They’re my people.
We don’t have a community. Not really. We’re too disillusioned to stick it out. When you see and albeit live the cycle of ever-changing cool kids and their popularity contests, you kind of get sick of it. I’m sad to report that it doesn’t necessarily change with age either. But, us weirdos and loners? We get more jaded but wise. We know when and where we’re needed, but it’s lonely in the meantime.
I want to do life next to my people. I’ve been telling y’all how much I want to stick up for you because that shit ain’t right for quite some time. I’m tired of doing it in hiding.
That is to say, I ain’t fucking with no fake fools.
I’ll have you if you’ll have me and even if we don’t cross paths, I’ve got your back and I’m speaking up for your need to hold fair space.
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