Believe That What You Are Is Enough
Posted by Moose on April 23rd, 2010. Filed under: My Brain Needs a Drink.For all the effort I put into not being a complete jackass to myself, every day finds me dissatisfied with something – whether it’s the ratio between amount of time spent working to amount of time spent staring blankly at a crack in the wall, or the way I look in jeans this week. (Hello, macaroni and cheese with truffle oil: I LOVE YOU SO. My belt does not.)
Today I’m (supposed to be) (there might be blank crack-in-wall staring instead) researching Alonzo King, a San Francisco choreographer who does some truly amazing things with the human body, thanks in part to the dancers he chooses because their artistry matches their technical chops. In an interview he said, “Believe that what you are is enough.” Oh my holy hell, how difficult that is.
Reality is my enemy. While it’s empirically true that I only got two hours of real work done today and that’s just not enough if I want to make a living working for myself, telling myself this constantly only keeps me paralyzed in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction with what I accomplish. But when I tell myself that whatever I do is enough, then I can usually relax and actually get my shit done. GO FIGURE.
It helps to sit down every morning and quiet my brain until it bypasses the Squirrels of Judgment and get to the deeper knowledge that I am a good person and I do have things to contribute to the world. It’s like a little room tucked between my liver and my heart where I can actually see what’s true and allow myself to CALM THE FUCK DOWN, THANK YOU. People call it meditating but I’m fond of calling it Vanquishing the Crazies.
There are a lot of dancers who don’t think of themselves as artists, so they come prepared to take dictation. But what I want is to give the dancers straw and have them turn it into gold. I want to give them sentences and have them structure it into poetry. – Alonzo King
I do this all the time, let myself get stuck in the box of what I think I am or think I should be and forget to add the poetry. I mean, not actual poetry. The only poetry to my credit is a poorly-metered epic about a Thanksgiving turkey on the lam. But you take my point.
What I am is enough. I assume that if I keep writing it down, it will start to feel true. Maybe I should tape up some butcher paper and scribble that quote all over my walls until I can remember it for longer than 30 seconds at a stretch. And, hey – what you are is enough too. Want some butcher paper?
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April 23rd, 2010 at 3:56 pm
I think this might be the very hardest thing to remember, of all things, ever.
April 23rd, 2010 at 5:18 pm
I’ll take that butcher paper.
April 24th, 2010 at 8:36 am
No butcher paper for me. Just a billboard right outside my bedroom door.
What great words. It seems that in our lives, we’re constantly being told to ‘improve’ ourselves; look younger, think faster, make more money. It would seem that in one way the statement “Believe that what you are is enough” sort of works against all that but when you really think about it, it doesn’t By first calming our crazy internal voices (you have squirrels, I have screaming cats), we are then allowed to think and embrace just being ‘us’. Which then allows more room to inspire us to do more. Kind of like a little reverse psychology.
At least that’s how it all seems to me, personally.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Sending big hugs your way.
April 24th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
This is beautifully written.
I taught high school English in a school in PA one year where the kids were allowed to write quotes on the walls. Not on paper on the walls. Literally, on the wall. There were years and years of quotes from Shakespeare, literary fiction, pop music, etc, that were all like this. Affirmative, kick-the-world-view-in-the-butt kind of stuff. That was the most amazing room I have ever worked in.
I say ditch the butcher paper. You’ll have to paint when you move out anyway.
April 24th, 2010 at 8:00 pm
I couldn’t have found your post at a better time. I needed to hear this and be reminded of it. Thank you!
April 26th, 2010 at 7:02 am
I needed to hear this today too.
April 26th, 2010 at 7:40 am
I’m kind of a big fan of scribbling (with a dry erase marker of course) random quotes on my mirror so I remember them. OR if I really like the quote and don’t want to look at my chicken scratches, I will dress it up pretty in word or whatever and print it out. And then hang it above my kitchen sink or in my bathroom or what have you.
I’m doing that with “Believe that what you are is enough”. It is something that should be remembered. My other current favorite is: “Because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have”.
April 26th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
What a great post! I’m even going to comment something good, as opposed to asking “What’s Life? A magazine…”
See, my boss makes me feel like I’m not enough. And everything I’ve always thought about myself, she has slowly, in the last 1 1/2 years, nitpicked so much that I have turned into a shell of my former worker bee self. And it pisses me off! As much as I try to not let her bother me, or listen to her, it is so hard. Because she’s my boss, and really, all that matters is her opinion, right? At least when it comes to my company.
So that’s why I need a new job. I can’t take it anymore, take someone making me feel like I did when I was 21 and just out of college and knew nothing about the business world.
April 26th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
One of my favorite lines to read and read and re-read is from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
April 27th, 2010 at 10:11 am
This is a well written, thoughtful post. Love it!
Sadie at heyMamas