Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in.
Life has shown me that strong friendships are most often the result of strong intentions. Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.
One light feeds another. One strong family lends strength to more. One engaged community can ignite those around it. This is the power of the light we carry.
Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands being bold.
When someone chooses to lift the curtain on a perceived imperfection in her story, on a circumstance or condition that traditionally might be considered to be a weakness, what she’s often actually revealing is the source code for her steadiness and strength.
Read books by people whose perspective is different from yours, listen to voices you haven’t heard before, look for narratives that are new to you. In them and with them, you might end up finding more room for yourself.
We only hurt ourselves when we hide our realness away.
Our differences are treasures and they’re also tools. They are useful, valid, worthy, and important to share. Recognizing this, not only in ourselves but in the people around us, we begin to rewrite more and more stories of not-mattering. We start to change the paradigms around who belongs, creating more space for more people. Step by step by step, we can lessen the loneliness of not-belonging.
There’s nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can’t or don’t see. When you are different, you can feel as if you’re operating with a different map, a different set of navigational challenges, than those around you. Sometimes, you feel like you have no map at all. Your differentness will often precede you into a room; people see it before they see you. Which leaves you with the task of overcoming.
Real-world connections most often tend to cut against stereotypes. They can be remarkably calming, in fact – a small but potent way to reset a bad mood or challenge broader feelings of mistrust. The only thing is that in order to get there, you do first need to lay down your shield.
Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in. It means that you have to be judicious with your energy and clear in your convictions. You push ahead in some instances and pull back in others, giving yourself opportunities to rest and restore. It helps to recognize that you are operating on a budget, as all of us are. When it comes to our attention, our time, our credibility, our goodwill toward and from others, we work with a limited but renewable set of resources.
Go forth with a spoonful of fear and return with a wagonful of competence.
I’ve progressed only slowly to where I am today. If you are a young person reading this, please remember to be patient with yourself. You are at the beginning of a long and interesting journey, one that will not always be comfortable. You will spend years gathering data about who you are and how you operate and only slowly will you find your way towards more certainty and a stronger sense of self. Only gradually will you begin to discover and use your light!
That’s what tools are for. They help keep us upright and balanced, better able to coexist with uncertainty. They help us deal with flux, to manage when life feels out of control. And they help us continue onward, even while in discomfort, even as we live with our strands exposed.
Going high is work – often hard, often tedious, often inconvenient, and often bruising. You will need to disregard the haters and the doubters. You will need to build some walls between yourself and those who would prefer to see you fail. And you will need to keep working when others around you may have grown tired or cynical and given up.
There’s nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can’t or don’t see.
Our hurts become our fears. Our fears become our limits.
Because here’s the thing: Emotions are not plans. They don’t solve problems or right any wrongs. You can feel them – you will feel them, inevitably – but be careful about letting them guide you. Rage can be a dirty windshield. Hurt is like a broken steering wheel. Disappointment will only ride, sulking and unhelpful, in the back seat. If you don’t do something constructive with them, they’ll take you straight into a ditch. My power has always hinged on my ability to keep myself out of the ditch.
Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.
Strong men, strong men, men who are truly role models, don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful.