Confusion

What is the difference between pain and fear, between shame and guilt, between sadness and sorrow?  I would normally turn to a dictionary to find out, but today as I feel some mix of these things, I turn to my heart.

I had a date last night, attending a dinner party with strangers and friends and someone I like very much.  I had a GREAT time!  Probably the best time I’ve had in a long time.

But the entire event has created some deep confusion.  To start with, while I was trying to figure out what to wear I discovered that I like to wear clothes that make me feel confident and badass — but also that tend to blend in with the background.  That isn’t how I wanted to feel on this date.  I wanted to feel beautiful and maybe even sexy.

But confidence is beautiful, right?  And yet, perhaps my confident is more like an armor.  So maybe what I really wanted to feel is attractive and a touch vulnerable.  What does that look like?  I did my best to find that outfit, settling on a bright top that moved gracefully around my skin and ballet leggings with a bow on the back that felt lovely to me…but in the end, I think my outfit still ended up more on the side of armor than I intended.

Why?

I found myself easily enjoying conversation with my date and the other people of the evening.  I’m a sociable person at heart and perhaps have always been a bit chatty…with a tendency toward deep topics.  This is who I am, and yet, throughout the evening, I kept feeling like I was standing out too much, talking too much, BEING too much.  I even found myself APOLOGIZING for it to my date and to the host!

Why?

My daughter tells me this makes everyone uncomfortable, and that makes me feel worse.  Worse?  But I had a GREAT time!  Why do I feel bad and worse?

This morning, I can’t stop feeling a bit upset about it all.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  In fact, people seemed to really like me as I was…enough that two of the couples at the dinner party suggested we do it again sometime.  My friends who were there told me they were happy to see me so happy–in fact “happier, that we’ve seen you in a long time.”  And my date said we would definitely get together again soon after he kissed me goodnight.

And then I had the thought…”Maybe I don’t like myself.”

That’s ridiculous!  Until I realize, it’s true.

I have this vision of the “perfect” me who is quiet, and gentle, and responsive to others, who doesn’t stand out, who is easily forgettable and generously supportive to everyone who crosses my path.  Except, I don’t think I’ve ever had a quiet volume setting; while I can be gentle, I spend most of my time studying martial arts and tend toward directness sometimes to the point of harshness; I’m not one to follow the crowd,  so blending in doesn’t really work; and I’m sufficiently unconcerned with doing things the “normal” way which tends to make people remember me.  As for generously supportive…well, I can be generous, but have recently discovered that might be armor too.

So that “perfect” me isn’t me at all.

A wise sage whose teachings I value said recently “[Enlightenment] is about connection not perfection.  Perfectionism always leads to individualism—as if the individual could ever be perfect.” (Father Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation Friday, Feb 7, 2020) And this in turn makes me think of my favorite philosopher, George Lucas “The First Order wins by making us think we’re alone. We’re not alone.”  (Poe, The Rise of Skywalker)

In searching for the accurate wording of that quote, I find another of Lucas’s gems that seems to leap off the page at me “What makes you unique makes you strong.  Yourself you must always be.” (Yoda, Forces of Destiny)

So maybe to clear up my emotional confusion I need to stop asking the questions “who am I?” and “who do I want to be?” — because I already know the answers — and instead embrace myself…or as George Lucas would say “In a dark place, we find ourselves.  And a little more knowledge lights our way.” (Yoda, Revenge of the Sith)