I’ve always been PETRIFIED of being the center of attention.
I think we’ve all been there. Knowing the answer to the teacher’s question in class, but being afraid to raise our hand - because what if we’re wrong? What worse scenario could there be???? The other peers would undoubtedly stand, point, and jeer at you, throwing tomatoes at you and pushing you out of the classroom into the hallway, never allowed to return.
Yeahhhh when you put it like that, it seems a little silly to be afraid to share something you believe to be true.
But that fear is something that’s taken me all my life to overcome.
Maybe it was growing up a girl, when we’re programmed to blend into the background.
Maybe it was growing up in a cult (Abrahamic religion) that threatened eternal damnation & misery if you identified with anything other than what they preached was okay.
Maybe it was being the child of a parent who was from another country, and a parent who had an untraditional vocation (commercial pollination) that made me second guess if I was ever “right.”
Safe to say - I never really fit in with the “normal” crowd.
(As I know now after having lived what feels like several lifetimes - there is no such thing as normal.)
I remember sharing a poem about my love of story in my fifth grade class, hands & voice shaking - but it was my passion to share my art that overrode my fear.
I was required to take a public speaking class in university, and when it was my turn to present - I’m pretty sure I blacked out from the experience of having the entire room’s eyes on me. I was forced to do so in order to pass the class and obtain my degree.
Don’t get it twisted, I could still maintain polite conversation & function as a member of society - I wasn’t a freakin’ mime or anything.
But it was only when I was forced to overcome my disdain for speaking to people I don’t know - that I realized speaking with (and to) others from a place of authenticity would unlock opportunity for connection…something I strongly feel our modern world starves us of. But that’s a story for another day.
I found this magical way that speaking with others can connect our hearts in what might be an unlikely place - The MAC makeup counter inside of Nordstrom.
For those who don’t know, working for MAC is a role that requires you to take it pretty seriously. Since your purpose is to sell product that buyers will enjoy (and NOT return, which is a challenge due to the absurdly lax return policy that made Nordstrom famous), experienced sales people know that this requires you facilitate a rigorous discovery phase with your potential buyer.
On top of this, you must use tact, personality, and charisma to construct an effortlessly enjoyable experience for the buyer - because we all ALSO know the stereotype of the sleazy car salesman or the snake oil salesman trope.
Most women are pretty intuitive & discerning.
It’s a power we hold because of good reasons, and bad.
We are creators of live, the primary caretakers for children in most circumstances, and we are the victims of violence from angry men who snap when we may unintentionally trigger them.
As women, we have had the skills to read others body language, speech inflection, and behavior patterns in order to stay alive.
As you might presume, most buyers of MAC makeup are women.
Women are humans I’d had the least experience connecting with, seeing as I was essentially raised as if I was a small man thanks to a father who’s wishes of having sons would forever remain unfulfilled. I shopped in the boys section at the store until high school. I was forced had the opportunity to experience work for many years within the system of my father’s commercial “bee business,” was a hunter & a deep sea fisherwoman(??), and forever the odd one out when it came to the girls in my class all throughout school.
So when it came to making bonds with women in order to sell to them………I was a fish out of water.
I’ll do a deeper dive on my experience at the MAC counter & how it changed my life another day, but for now I’ll bring you to the present.
It has taken years - decades - (ooo I’m old baby) accidentally becoming stronger in my self confidence & being brave enough to share my most vulnerable thoughts with the world.
Every time, my growth has been the result of the desire to accomplish my goal being stronger than my fear of what others might think of me for speaking my truth.
Sometimes that looks like a customer at the MAC counter buying product per my recommendation, and then later returning it to the dismay of my counter manager.
Sometimes it looks like putting a display of political signs up in front of my house, decals stating my political dissent & outrage on my vehicle, and cutting ties with people in my life who have shown they have different morals than I do.
When you’re older, when you have friendships you’ve invested years into, when you run a business, have connections with people & have more at stake that can suffer the consequences of your free speech - that’s when it’s definitely more scary to be unmistakably different from the crowd, and unapologetically so.
But I know what it’s like to live in fear of being different.
I know what it’s like to feel alone.
I know now that part of my purpose as a human being in this timeline, this reality - is to act as the person I always needed in my own life growing up.
I’ve gone through so many evolutions over my 33 years of living, and I hope you have, too.Something that has brought me comfort is the science of quantum physics - the study of how our perception can change reality, how time is not linear, and how the way we heal ourselves in turn positively affects others around us in a ripple effect.
There’s a concept that the actions you take, and the way you interact with yourself in the current moment will actually be felt by your past self. Because your past self is still there, still living in that timeline, in fact everything everywhere is happening simultaneously - I encourage you to explore studies on that from folks far more equipped to teach it than I -
The point is - my motivation is myself. My past self, my current self, my future self.
And as someone who has always felt aligned with the art & power of language, it’s been rewarding & strengthening for me to dedicate time & energy to this writing practice.
I know that there’s a pressure now with the push for monetization of content to only really do things to document them, to publicize them, to perform for the purpose of consumption by others.
But I would implore you to think about what you can do without any attachment to an outcome that will strengthen your self identity and make you proud of who you are and help heal the wounds that have also made you who you are.
As someone coming to terms with the darkness happening in our current timeline due to those who have intentionally designed our society to distract us from realizing how much power each of us truly have to change the world - this is one way I am resisting.
Resisting can look like violence, protest, education, participation in mutual aid - but it can also be done by putting in the reps to feel brave enough to speak out in public.
I know so many who feel the same way I do, but who haven’t had the reason to strengthen their self identity enough to shamelessly stand up for what they believe in.
So I hope this piece made you maybe think about things from a different perspective. I hope to encourage you to love yourself enough to do what your younger self needed. I hope you try to heal yourself. Because by healing yourself, we can have the strength as a collective to help heal the world.
Thank you so much for taking the time to witness my work. ✨ If this piece made you think, I’d appreciate if you shared it on a platform of your choice or sent it to a loved one directly to help my mission of resistance through my art works ✨
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