 Try to use them to make everyone love and value you. Try to use them to save the world. Try to make your work like everyone else’s. Try to make your work unlike everyone else’s. Pretend that it’s a huge deal, that only you can offer what you offer. Pretend it doesn’t matter, that you don’t care. See-saw from unrealistic expectations to guilt and shame, then numb out, then start again. Keep waiting for some magic moment of ‘permission’ and ‘recognition’ from the world. Believe being ‘gifted’ means you ‘deserve’ to be at least a bit wealthy and well-known, and if you don’t become so, you’re not gifted. Believe being gifted is somehow unique, and thus stay isolated. Constantly judge yourself on whether/how much you’re doing your thing or not, and waste all your energy on these judgments, instead of doing your thing. Become ‘successful’, but feel empty and burnt out. Become great at what you do, but despair of ‘success.’ Constantly stop and start, like a schizo line-dancer. Read another self-help book. Feed your kinky addiction to shame and stuckness. OR Just drop all the stories. Drop the judgments. Make your primary commitment to never shame yourself again. And don’t shame yourself for shaming yourself either! Accept that everyone’s gifted. It’s not a big deal. Gifts are not ‘special.’ It means being given something. Therefore having something to give. Stop pretending you’re waiting for recognition - you’ve already been offered more recognition than you could ever need, but you’ve blocked it, denied it, forgotten it, because it didn’t fit your story. Deep down, because you’re scared to let it in. Our entire culture of ‘needing recognition’ from a bigger audience is unsustainable on every level - it would take 144,000 extra planets of people just to sit and clap us all. Feel how much you care. But don’t buy into drama. Skip the whole layer of pressure, justification and shame and go straight to LOVE and GRIEF. We love our gifts, and grieve when we don’t embrace and express them freely. Not because we ‘should’ do something, and ‘should’ live up to our potential. Because our heart aches to. Express your gifts whenever you can, in tiny ways, in big ways. Now. In your real life, in real ways. The world doesn’t need more superstar ballerinas and pop idols. It needs more people dancing and singing in our kitchens, in the streets. The world doesn’t need more celebrity authors and teachers, it needs us all to live the wisdom in our own bodies and hearts. The world doesn’t need more revolutionary ideas. It needs us to do what we already know is right, is enough. The world doesn’t need you to become somebody. It needs you to be yourself, as you are right now. This is true leadership. It's not a big deal. I'm right here on this journey with you, trying to remember these things every day. PS - my posts have had thousands of comments on FB, but I've been oddly slow to get them up on my site. So my words may be a bit lonely, would you like to add yours? Share ways in which you restrict or free yourself to live your gifts in the comments. Let's help each other remember what matters most. PPS: Want to feed your writing flow? Check out my upcoming workshops....
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At the age of 28, our break-up ritual almost burnt a festival down.
My lover and I sat in a dust-dry straw meadow, in heat-wave England, outside a hippy day-dream called Unicorn Voice Camp (no joke!), and lit a handmade candle we’d been given on our wedding day. I was leaving for a castle in Slovenia, going to a gathering for global transformation. She was staying at camp. With her new lover. We shared, wept, giggled. The handmade candle melted almost instantly and the straw began blazing. My lover was flustered, but I've always felt friendly with fire and I jumped up and stamped out the flames with my bare feet. If we’d been distracted, left it for a minute, the whole field could have lit-up so easily. As I walked away from our messily beautiful, deliciously agonising goodbyes something lit-up in me deeper than ever before, - a knowing that it’s okay the world is the way it is, and also okay that I feel the way I feel. This wasn't a new idea filling my head, it was a sudden inflation through the cramped, needled places in my chest. I felt like a giant had just given me mouth to mouth and made my lungs twice as big. It was okay we were separating. It had been my choice in fact. And it was okay I was heartbroken, terrified, raging. It was ok that I felt abandoned, even though that made no sense whatsoever. If I held both truths at once, there was nothing to reject, nothing to fight, nowhere to run; nothing to break my world into pieces. I’ve kept coming home to that simple knowing since. It’s not a revelation; we all know it. But to live by holding both truths at once has often saved my sanity, often made the difference between being clenched-up and wretched and being able to remember, in my body, the greater holding that life offers, to know that heartbreak and wholeness are inseparable. It sometimes becomes my prayer: "It’s okay my voice has been strained, sometimes lost, for years now. Okay I’ve often been grief-stricken, scared, furious. Ok people barely look each other in the eyes on the street. Okay that it’s heartbreaking. Okay that the ridiculously exquisite woman who works in [XYZ] has a boyfriend. Okay that I ache for her when I see her. Okay I’ll never love a fraction of the bodies I could love that way. Okay I’ll never write a fraction of the poems, climb a fraction of the mountains, be cradled in a fraction of the waves, help a fraction of the people, heal a fraction of myself on any given day. And it’s okay that it breaks my heart. Heartbreak is a gift. Love and grief are carved from the same depth of space within us. Our capacity for love expands in exact symmetry to our capacity for loss. Okay I don’t know who I am or what I want. Okay it sometimes drives me crazy." It sometimes becomes my prayers for everyone: "Okay we don’t always get the job, win the day, find the answer, get heard, get seen, find our way. Okay that it fucking hurts. In fact, either thing can only be okay, when we remember that both are okay. When we hold both truths at once. Only then can we heal fully. Only then can we live fully." That is the magic trick with emotions - to never fight, flee or freeze what we feel, or what we see out in the world. To stop waging war within, and without. It’s okay. What would be your prayer, if you chose to pray this way? Let us know in the comments, we can make a thread of acceptance together.  "There's nothing heavier than an untold story." Maya Angelou So many forms of untold truth weigh us down; the great tragedies of history, family secrets and the unspoken truths of each moment. Each story wants to be 'told' in some sense, to be given back to the greater holding of life, released from our bodies and our psyches. If each of us can find safe, sustainable ways to release more truth back into the greater holding of life, more healing and transformation becomes possible...poetry and storytelling are just some of the many wonderful ways to do this. This poem is one of endless attempts to play my part.
Coming to Light Maybe, when history’s rewritten from the beginning, to tell the stories of all women, people of colour, labourers, slaves, indigenous, queers, creatures and elements whose backs paved the way for each famous white man’s fame… Maybe, when we stop pretending anyone can be free, be equal, be whole, stay alive, in isolation, or that anyone’s hurt is theirs alone…. Maybe, when every profit ever registered is measured in the balance with its loss… Maybe, when every victory is weighed in the same scales as its costs… Maybe, when the last ‘unbaptised’ child is raised up from their unmarked grave, into light, and blessed, not by the same carrion sacraments which proclaimed their bodies profane, but by being returned a name, being washed in the tears held in limbo’s decades… Maybe, when all the disappeared ones, and all the still disappearing, are spoken of in the same breath as the race for quantum computing, AI and star-colonisation… Maybe, when in one choking leap we speak the terror and grief swallowed from throat to chest to gut to grave, just to keep our heads up on this trading floor… Maybe, when in a single blink we catch sight of our own raised fists and admit, first; we’ve only ever waged war against ourselves, we’ve all played our part in this world that we’ve made, second; how much we love, want to love, all those whom we claim to hate… When the last lie which breaks life into pieces comes to light… When the last love we sought to protect comes home… Maybe, then… We’ll be able to say it: “I dwell here on this Earth.” PS: I first wrote this poem in response to a specific tragedy, the Tuam Babies scandal in Ireland. An underground chamber, a sewage tank in fact, was discovered to hold the bodies of 800 babies which had been secretly 'buried' there. There is still an ongoing struggle to have the full history of these children, and those from other Irish institutions, made public. PPS: Though my posts have had thousands of comments on Facebook, I'm only now adding them to my site, so they may be a bit lonely, without your words to keep them company. Comments are a thousand times welcome. |
AuthorDave Rock is a prize-winning spoken word artist and storyteller, and a conscious writing, speaking and performing arts teacher. He's worked with thousands of people, including award-winning comedians, actors and inspirational figures. Archives
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