Every week thus far, I've reminded us that we are already telling our life stories daily based on how we live and by the stories we tell ourselves.
This week, I want to dive deeper into courageous storytelling.
I've been interested lately—and probably all of my life, though not with acute awareness—in what I can best explain as identifying with what Thomas Merton claimed: “There is in all things a hidden wholeness.”
The word ‘hidden’ is the thing I want to deconstruct today.
I am fascinated by the duality of life. In my bios online, I claim that I don't believe that light and dark can really be classified as good or bad but that they are both simply necessary.
What I mean by this is that to know happiness, we must know its opposite—sadness. That contrast and duality are why we can choose to be happy, live good lives, and create life stories of our own making—because we have a choice. The only way we can have a choice is if there are things to choose from. If everything were consistent and had no opposite, there would be no opportunity for choice.
Back to the hidden wholeness. We often walk through life with our forward-facing good selves and veil our “shadow” selves. I don't necessarily like to label things ‘shadow’ because doing so connotes an ominous or dark aspect of ourselves, but I use this differentiator here more to shed light (pun intended) on this aspect of us. I recognize these “shadow selves” as parts of us we don't readily reveal to the world.
There are reasons for not disclosing certain aspects of ourselves. We have secrets. We have judgments about certain parts of ourselves. We may have shame. Or, we’ve decided that this part is a private part of our personality or ourselves that we choose not to share with the world. All of those things are perfectly fine and natural human inclinations. There's nothing wrong with veiling certain aspects of ourselves, but I do believe that choosing only to put forward the things that we believe the world will accept or that we feel are most appealing about us does limit us in telling our best life stories.
In my book coming out later this month, I include a quote from Brené Brown that highlights the etymology of the word courage and highlights her often-used phrase, “Courage is telling your story with your whole heart.”
What I love about her quote is that it reminds me to live my truth, but it also reminds me that our full telling of our life stories with a brave and whole heart is a favorable and somewhat imperative thing for us to do. Now, it doesn't mean you must air your dirty laundry to the world, but if we think about the hidden parts of ourselves that we either judge or feel ashamed of or consider unappealing, those things still contribute to who we are.
How can we show up fully in our lives if we deny aspects of ourselves because of our judgment of them? Moreover, how can we fully acknowledge another human being for who they are if we deny the whole of who we are?
So, for me, it's about integrity.
I was taught long ago that integrity is when your thoughts, words, feelings, and actions align. And the way that the person who explained it to me illustrated it was an exact, perfect, straight, vertical line (see my illustration below).
