A perfectly flawed manifesto

Wow.  It looks like you might be staring down one Very Dull Day if you’re settling in with 15 pages about me.  Kidding!  It’s only, like, 10 pages, and I’m totally flattered.  I will try to make it worth your time. 

By the way, writing a manifesto is pretty intimidating.  I prefer the title “Things that feel true for me today.  As of 3 pm.”  Because there are no absolutes, and these ideas are subject, and even welcome, to change at anytime.

Distilling everything I believe into 28 salient points has been quite the challenge.  I calmed myself about its inherently flawed state with the hope that someone will read it and think “I can do so much better” and then feel compelled to do just that.  I would love to inspire you to write your own, whether because you like what I have to say or think I’m a complete moron.

I love stories and metaphor and art, and I think these forms express the truth more powerfully and beautifully than just saying hey, here is the truth.  But first it helps to know what’s true for me.  And it’s actually funny how hard it can be to pinpoint and express what I believe. No sooner do I wrestle down a slippery idea before the doubts and opposing beliefs are queuing up like a snake through my brain to make their counter arguments.  

I am pretty smitten with Chris Guillebeau’s 29 page Brief Guide to World Domination.  I adore Gretchen Rubin’s Twelve Commandments, all 48 words of ‘em.  The format and the method don’t really matter.  The idea is that clarity is cool.  Knowing who you are and what you value is very cool.  Living life aligned with a clear mind and heart is really very cool.

I wanted to memorialize these ideas to keep reminding myself of how I want to live.  My guess is that most of the 28 ideas included here have stuck with me because they were hard won. I’ve learned these tidbits in dealing with my own stuff, and by no means have I mastered them all.  

Why 28 nuggets?  Time’s a ticking.  I turn 29 this month, and I told myself that if I finished before my birthday, I could have a whole year to identify and express Big Important Truth Number 29.  Then I started thinking, isn’t enlightenment less about tacking on additional pithy ideas and more about peeling concepts away?  So does that mean next year I’ll let go of my attachment to one of these ideas instead of adding something new?  We’ll see. 

I use the pronouns “I” and “you” based on what felt comfortable for me.  Try not to notice.  It all means I, me, you, us, we.  

Also, some of these tidbits are written as commands.  They are directed to me. Not you.  I want you to follow your own heart.  And in fact, if you read one and think “nuh-uh, not me!” then right on.  Because that’s clarity.

Well then.  Away we go!

1.  I have a love/hate relationship with paradox.  Muahahaha.  No, really.  I think paradox can be incredibly poignant, moving and almost unbearably bittersweet.  I am a jumble of contradictions myself.  This makes writing a manifesto excruciatingly difficult and a lot of fun.  I think it has something to do with the idea that the opposite of every great truth is also true.  And something to do with the scrambled nature of my own brain.

2.  The people you think are truly cool and funny and smart will most certainly think the same of you as soon as you start being yourself.  It can’t be any other way.  The same is true for romantic love.  There is no way we are meant to love someone soulfully who can’t love us back.

3.  No one else knows what’s right for you.  When you are tapped into your own innate wisdom, you have all the answers you need.  Our friends and family might really love us, and might absolutely want what’s best for us, but they aren’t able to sync into our divine spark.

4.  All religions, stripped down to their core essence, are pointing toward the same truth: Love.  You are loved, I am loved, love each other, love yourself. It really is true that love is all there is.  It isn’t easy.  Five minutes after writing this, I got an e-mail that annoyed the crap out of me.  Getting annoyed is not loving to anyone, but I do try.  

5.  Alway being yourself will change your life in more unexpected and beautiful ways than you can possibly imagine.  It will also often be unnerving, terrifying, and exhilarating all at once.

6.  You are almost certainly meant to do the thing you’re scared to admit you want to do.

7.  Divorce can be a wonderful thing.  For every stepparent painted as evil, there are bajillions who love their stepchildren madly.  I was raised by four parents.  My mom and stepdad, my dad and stepmom.  My stepparents are two of the foremost reasons I feel lucky to be me.  I lost my stepfather this year, and being his daughter taught me to smile big, to go for it right now, and to like being me.

8.  Comparing yourself to other people will seriously kill your dreams dead on the spot.

9.  Be funny and we can be friends.  Think I’m funny and I am putty in your hands.  Laughter trumps everything else.  Everything.  Else.  

10.  Not everyone is meant to be wealthy or thin or beautiful according to the standards of their particular culture.  But everyone is meant to be happy.

11.  If you are not being you, there is a hole in the universe.  Am I repeating myself about the imperative to be yourself? Yes, but it’s kind of a big deal.  Because of the whole unique snowflake thing, if you aren’t being you, and no one else can be you, then the universe is really missing out on your special magic juju.  Which, I think, sucks.

12.  I am meant to be having this experience.  Believing this isn’t automatic or easy, but it is a path of spiritual growth and depth.  I’m not a Pollyanna and I don’t jump for joy when something tragic happens. But believing I can and will find ways to be thankful for everything that happens helps me to heal and to lead a fuller, richer life.

13.  You will never find lasting comfort, joy, or meaning in external validation.  As quick as someone can say “Bravo” someone else will call you an idiot.  Find the approval within yourself.

14.  There is only one way to break up with someone.  Do it once.  Do it fast.  Tell the truth.  Be kind.  And when your heart is being broken, always remember that it hurts to be the breaker-upper, too.

15.  Sometimes right in the middle of an ambitious project or the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, you’ll realize you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing.  It might be raising your kid or writing a book, and you’ll wonder if you’re doing it right.  And there will be no way of knowing.  Don’t mistake the absence of knowing for a sign that you are off course.  This is where you will have to rely on faith and hope and grace.

16.  That whole concept of “you spot it, you got it” can be seriously dreadful. There’s nothing worse than trying to figure out what I have in common with the person who is annoying or angering or crazifying me.  On the plus side, though, if it’s true for the irritating stuff, it must also be true for the awe-inspiring stuff.  So if there’s something you admire or adore or just find generally worship-worthy in someone else, then there must be a lick of it in you, too.

17.  I am head over heels in love with reading.  I have been since I was four and carried around my dog-eared Little Golden Books copy of 101 Dalmatians.  *Weird sidenote – how scary was Cruella De Vil?  And what a rad name for an antagonist.

18.  Sending people cards is my guilty pleasure.  Weird, right?  What’s so guilty about it?  I think I feel guilty because it looks like something I’m doing for other people, when really I do it because it makes me feel fantastic.  Isn’t that the magic in any gift we give?  That we actually receive by giving?  The trick is to never give in anticipation or expectation of receiving something in return.

19.  I’m almost incapable of watching the end of a sporting event, especially something where the win comes down to one person. I get so overwhelmingly empathetic for the loser, even if my team’s winning, even if I’m winning, that it takes all of the fun out of the victory.  I blame a couple of heart-wrenching high school football games; watching the kicker miss that last crucial field goal seriously shredded my heart for him. But to win big, you have to play the game.  Life is not a spectator sport.  Insert all of those champion cliches here.  Failure and suffering give fertile ground to growth and joy.  You know, learning to be strong in the broken places and all that.  So give other people credit for having the strength to handle whatever life brings.  People don’t need you to sugarcoat things in order to protect them. Be kind, and also be real and honest and bold.  Someday we will all look back and understand why the poet Antonio Machado wrote that life was a dream and “the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.” 

20.  Reaching perfection is a grand myth, and there is no “there.”  You are already perfectly there.

21.  Nothing opens my eyes, heart, mind, and soul like travel.  And it always gives me a fresh appreciation for home.

22.  Being comfortable with shining glory and intimate vulnerability are two sides of the same coin.  Wearing your heart on your sleeve is irresistible.  

23.  You just never know who will pick you up when you feel blue, and there is nothing lovelier than impulsive generosity.  Never turn it down.  Even better if you can ask for it.

24.  Every now and then absolutely everyone you know will be raving about something – a person, a book, an idea – and you just will not get it. That is perfectly okay.  Don’t waste your time beating yourself up about not getting it, and then backing your way into getting it.  First of all, by then it will be over.  Passe.  Second, the reason you don’t get it is very simple: you don’t need it.

25.  If you have even one friendship you’ve nurtured since childhood, you are a lucky soul.

26.  Food can be nutritious and taste delicious.  I am so tempted to say food “should” be nutritious and taste delicious, but I have learned that purism with food is my own personal road to hell.  The one paved with good intentions and all of that.

27.  Our planet is a luscious, wondrous, miraculous place to live and we should take care of it.  That includes taking care of each other.

28.  I’m borrowing this last one from Joseph Campbell because, well, he’s kind of like the godfather of bliss.  ”What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another.  Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons.  Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco.  There’s always the possibility of a fiasco.
But there’s also the possibility of bliss.”