now I've done it...

So, I’m down at the gallery hop and run into some friends and I tell them I’m blogging.

Great. Now I’ve done it.

Now I have to keep at it because someone may actually read this. I wasn’t counting on that… Of course, you can remind me that the whole point of getting my fanny in gear and actually writing is the hope of someday being published, which would eventually mean (gasp!) that people would read what I’ve written. But there is still, despite this logic (you will find that disregarding logic is a common theme), a vulnerable and exposed feeling that just feels flat-out junior highish.

Yuck.

I am convinced, given what I have observed of people, that the vast majority of us live in some degree of constant tension between the desperate desire to be fully and completely known and the sheer, stark terror of the very same. I feel it daily, like the way your thighs quiver when you’ve been squatting for too long—the strain somewhere between clenching and releasing. I want to be authentic. I want to live my next 35 years without fear and inhibition and insecurity. I am too old for junior high.

I believe this tension exists because we were made to be fully known, but we screwed it up. The desire compels us relentlessly because we were created to be fully, completely, freeing-ly known. But that connection was severed, and what was the first thing that happened? We hid from God, from each other, and from ourselves. Just as it is intrinsically within our perfect nature to be known, it is hardwired into our fallen nature to be hidden. The two are by nature at odds with one another—and I expect will never be completely reconciled this side of heaven.

I read a quote once that made me cry—“If you want to have an exceptional child, you must be willing to have an exceptional child.[1]” I’ll discuss that at more length another time, but my point in bringing it up is that it logically follows that if you want to be fully known, you must be willing to be fully known. The overcoming of fear requires risk. It requires no longer wishing I was doing something, but actually doing it.

I’m going to DO it.

And tomorrow, I might even give another other person my link…

© 2005

[1] From The Highly Sensitive Child : Helping Our Children Thrive When the World Overwhelms Them, by Elaine Aron, © 2002.