A Libel on Myself

My good friend and I made a pact several years ago, that we would never be like the barfy expats who tell anything that breathes every single one of their semi-unique experiences to prove to the breathing listener that they are very special, almost definitely more special than the listener whose hopefully still breathing.  Turns out, that isn't usually a problem for me, to the point, I think it might be a problem.  I, like everyone breathing, have been given some absolutely wonderful experiences, I mean wonderful in that even if they were horrible bad bad awful, I learned a lot, and I should probably share.  I want to hear everyone else's experiences and at the same time see if mine might fit in a little with theirs in our funny little attempts to make sense of our lives in the world.

Its feels like if I don't share the experiences and ideas other people have given to me I am somehow letting them down, and letting the world down because what they contributed to me is so great I really think that it could somehow fit into the world picture even more if I just did my fair part in spreading out their greatness.  But it's hard for me to share.  Sometimes I feel like because its coming from me, I myself am not that special and can't have that much greatness to contribute even if I am the messenger of something great.  It's like I am an old-timey kingdom's messenger, the king gave me a super important great message to run and give to the other kingdom across the way and once I get there I feel like I'm not a king so what kind of crummy quality message do I have to share with another kingdom?

Or, sometimes I get to the next kingdom and I see a few of the people act a little disrespectful towards another messenger, a messenger I hold in higher esteem than myself, and it either freaks me out or I decide I don't want to share my message with them if these are the kind of people they are.  Kind of like when you're at a Sounders game and everyone stands up to cheer and a few people start doing a mean cheer, I just want to sit down.  I don't want to share my cheering with them if they are going to act that way.  But then!  Then, I am furious with myself for sitting down, I should have worked up the courage to ask them to stop and then shared my positive cheering.  Though, that never seems fair to me, I'm not the one making things crummy why should I have to be brave?  So, like someone great shared with me, life isn't fair, so I have to be brave.

I have to be brave because a lot of wonderful people have given to a me a lot of wonderful things to share, even to share with people who's actions bother me, and I owe it to the wonderful people.  Writing makes it easier to share.  Especially because there's space to allow all the awful thoughts to come out first with everything else, in a shitty first draft like Lamott describes, you can let everything spill out and then give yourself a minute to make sense of it.  The bad stuff is really needed to fully make sense of everything.   Then you can take another minute to delete or change the super-highly offensive parts, which aids in sharing with everyone, even those people who inspired the highly-offensive parts, so that even without having to think about sharing with them, you can do so productively.  Like using Lamott's advice in avoiding defamation without avoiding the consciousness and meaning making writing and reading can assist with.

Blogging is an interesting experience.  Partially because I know I have to be extra careful about what I share.  I'm filtering a little more to share with potentially lots more people.  At the same time this makes it so much easier for me to share.  My mouth is untrustworthy and so is my mind but given the space and time to be careful enough to actually post and share my words makes me braver.  It's as if I'm at a Sounders game and everyone just pauses for me to organize and feel good about my words and then I can feel confident enough to help stop the mean cheering and add more of myself to the positive cheering.  Blogging Bravery I hope leads to Copious Courage Everywhere.