Flip the Script

How do I do this? I could be trite and say: Just trust in yourself.

I don’t imagine that would make a very good story. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a person who I worked with for a few years. He was the most aggravating person I’ve ever known. Looking back, I used the term hateful to describe having to work with him on occasion.

For me, that’s a very sharp response. Allow me to explain. He was an A#1, First Class Contrarian. No matter what your perspective or point of view, he would flip the script on every thought you’d care enough to share.

He would make mention of everything and anything that was the exact opposite of your assertion. From any perspective, be it social, societal, historical, religious, political, pop-cultural and most of his responses didn’t come from a studied or researched position. Just things that he’d heard or seen or read somewhere. I imagine it made him feel superior when he could provoke someone's ire and it was absolutely intentional.

Many of those close to me know that I’m going through changes right now.

Right now, things are happening in my brain. I am fully introspective. The dissociated dots are connecting seemingly disparate ideas and thoughts, forming parallels in ways that are revealing some pretty interesting and helpful things. I’ll give you an example.

Someone shared a photo of a piece of artwork with me. It was a beautiful sculpture and it will be difficult to describe, but I’ll give it a try. It was a three dimensional figure of a woman made of heavy, almost rebar thick metal wire. The wire was manipulated in a way that it had a dense, spiral curvy feminine pattern head to toe. The arms and legs had the same consistent pattern as the torso.

There was some space between all the curves in the pattern. Enough so that if the sculpture were empty, you could put something the size of your hand held flat through and between the waves of wire which constituted the armature, but the sculpture was full of rocks. Smooth, rounded, naturally multicolored river rocks.

I imagine that placing the stones into the figure so that there was a consistent density throughout the sculpture would be almost as much fun as bending and forming the armature itself. The pose of the form was lovely. Did I say it was beautiful? It was so beautiful.

My first thought was one of almost jealousy. I’m an artist as well and this piece resonated so strongly with me. Based on previous conditioning, I couldn’t help thinking something like, I could have, or should have done or be able to do something like that.

Immediately, my heart flipped the script.

It recognized that this is a work of the heart, from a gifted and talented artist. They dared to be vulnerable enough to share their passion and enthusiasm through their craft with the world and to put out a call for commissions. There’s no doubt in my mind that people will come forward and engage this artist's talent, paying them to continue doing the thing they’re passionate about.

That’s called ‘showing up’. Making a commitment to yourself, to learn about what interests you and the continuous effort to find ways of sharing what you're passionate about with the world. You don’t need to be an amazing sculptor, but in a way... you are. Fully capable of sculpting a life you’re actually good with now and a life you'll really love to live later.

I am honored by anyone willing to share their passion and seeing that sculpture made my day. It was a bright moment that filled me with joy.

I look back on my colleague, how annoying they were and suddenly I find value where I would never imagine it to exist. Yes, I still think that being an intent, unrelenting contrarian isn’t a good thing, but taking an immediate and thoughtful moment to inspect your knee jerk reactions is extraordinarily invaluable.

Change can be a good thing and right now, it’s creating some wonderful moments for me.

The world is full of people. Some have a willingness to understand and support quality connections with others and some lack the ability or willingness to do so.

The patterns involved in the way each of us think are the result of learning by hearing, seeing, doing, reading, what we’re taught and most crucial... the things we accept as hard, fast and seemingly immutable truths.

What we accept as a relative truth in our lives or the world we know, defines a lot about us. The way we interact with others and how we open ourselves up or close ourselves off from ideas, people and experience.

These two things are intimately bound with one another. When you change, eliminate or replace a relative truth you’ve come to accept with something else, the qualities of the way you interact and relate with others changes.

If you're lucky, sometimes ‘relate to’ can become ‘relate with’.

In any case, the practice of taking a moment to listen to yourself, inspecting what you think or say when you have a strong reaction to anything is a good place to start.