Which selves have you buried and forgotten? Which aspects of yourself do you no longer show the world? Which of the lights coded deeply in your DNA has experience asked you to dim, to place in darkness, to forget and cast aside? Shame is not, I think, something we are born knowing. But over time, we begin to feel shame of pieces and parts of who we intrinsically are. And over time, we don't exhibit those gifts and we don't shine that light and life loses a certain richness, doesn't it?
I have buried the enormity of the way that music can make me feel; of the sense that when I close my eyes and listen intensely, the actual core of my existence vibrates with an intensity of emotion that is wholly overwhelming and centering and elicits feelings which nearly always threaten drowning. I don't tell people that music is one of the reasons being alive is meaningful to me. I do, however, frequently repeat Kurt Vonnegut's quote in A Man Without a Country, "The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music."
I have buried the intensity of my love for the natural world and the depth of feeling I have for the animals who share this planet with us. We are killing the planet slowly and it is not enough to destroy ourselves; we are also going to take down the elephants and the lions and some of my favorite types of trees and the obscenely lush and diverse planet we have inherited. This is a thing I don't speak openly about, not with most people; the expression of this kind of personal devastation is a bit off-putting to most and a little scary. And in this world where we can agree on nothing, despair at a deeply distressed planet is somehow a divisive viewpoint.
I frequently diminish my reader, writer, and pursuer of ideas. I don't discuss Foucault or Virginia Woolf or my deep love for Beethoven and Arvo Part in passing conversation. I don't speak about Lloyd Alexander and The Book of Three and the emotional way it ties me to my oldest brother or the way that stringing these sentences together calms and eases an acquired existential pain and makes the world seem somehow tolerable and beautiful again. I don't speak about the way I deeply yearn for a place to share art again, to watch the creations of others and share my own. I don't delve too deeply into the mourning I have for listening to the live expression of singers and pianists and violinists and poets and writers in my adult life. I don't even particularly care to see the greats perform; I just want to watch my friends bare just the smallest slice of their souls to the world (what joy there is in that vulnerability, in the raw and earnest expression of an art!).
I bury the child who still wants to be parented, the piece of myself who just wants someone else to take care of things for a bit. I bury a fascination with the stars and an obsession with the idea that there may be life out there in the depth of that darkness. I don't speak of the way Catholicism broke me; I don't talk about my distaste for religion and I don't talk about my deep yearning for spirituality and a connectedness to the general spiritual consciousness of humanity because either topic is just as likely to result in alienation.
I don't speak about the way others have harmed me, I bury the burden of that pain in half-smiles and humor. I think of the best friends of my childhood who I now know nothing about, my first lover who all but broke me, and the multitude of wrongs I feel I have committed against others. I have buried, deeply, the hundreds of doors once opened to me that closed with each subsequent life choice and the infinite paths that lay ahead of me in any given moment (and the way the overwhelming possibility of choosing wrong in any given moment completely overwhelms me). I don't delve too deeply into Milan Kundera and The Unbearable Lightness of Being because the idea of not having a dress rehearsal for this life still haunts and cripples me.
We are all asked to dim so much of who we are. We are asked not to shine too brightly. It would be a shame, wouldn't it, if our light offended someone else? If the intensity of our passion or our feelings or our commitment to living meaningfully made someone else uncomfortable.
I am tired of putting myself, the things which are most inextricably linked to the deepest humming of my soul, on dim.
What would happen if we all showed up, every day, precisely as we are? There is no truth or beauty in shadow. What if we allowed the light which has guided us from the moment we first became conscious of it to guide every decision? And what if, instead of shining just a little less brightly in order to avoid offending those around us, we illuminated every dark corner and every hidden nook with the intensity of our existence? What if we laid bare our souls with a vulnerability and a commitment in every choice and conversation with no fear, shame, or guilt?
Shine on, my beautiful friends. Fill the darkness with your humanity, with the rawness of your very existence. Leave no passion unexplored and no fellow searcher unloved. Lay the darkness bare and rejoice in the truth and pain of this mortal life with vulnerability and honesty. Shine on, my beautiful friends, as brightly and with as much magnitude and intensity as you can muster. Sing loudly into the night, write the stories of your soul, and confront the pain collected over a life lived courageously.
Shine on, my beautiful friends. This time is too short and you are too vibrant and the world so desperately needs your light. I so desperately need it.
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