INSIDE OUT

Inside out is hard. Ask a running back. They get paid to follow large men into confusion and escape unscathed. While offensive lineman protect their respective play callers from annihilation, running backs make a living penetrating the human mine field that is a defensive scheme. It’s all in a day’s work too…to move the chains or scoot for 30+ yards en route to “the house (a touchdown).” Inside-out is hard on many levels.

And I can tell because writing about real, transparent life gets heavy…so heavy that one can experience writer’s block. And truth told, life is never short of things blog worthy but inside-out is exhausting. The question is whether you can muster the audacity to remain authentic. When what’s going on in your life is suddenly  displayed it should be comfortable but we all know it isn’t. Inside out usually occurs via scandalous revelation through gossip. TMZ  or forced confessions.

I sat in a room recently with some co-workers and we labored through an affirmation exercise that took literally hours. Do you know how hard it is to sit through 15 people telling you what they see in you? It was hard because the infinitely varied perspectives, all accurate, show you things you didn’t want to believe about yourself. You are so used to stewing in society’s juices of slander, ridicule and back handed praise. The guarded individual is what we become whether we like it or night. This is why we don’t share life willingly and wobble when others genuinely esteem us. To share who I really am means I become vulnerable. It’s Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith all over again beating the opposition to the punch by citing his own faults before someone else can. But who wants to admit they’re a loser in any respect? So we don’t live inside-out.

Then again, when people beat us to the punch with adoration and accolades seeing the best in us despite the worst we see continually in the mirror, we again resist inside-out. So imagine, we neither share our faults nor our strengths with the people we do life with everyday. What kind of lives are those? Among people constantly but trapped inside some crazy isolated bubble. Inside-out life is fun. Is not TMI or a case of bleeding all over people. It’s just life lived in real time as real events unfold. If the champions of isolation and compartmentalization were honest they would say, “I just don’t want to spend my energy thinking about other people’s crap.” In a word, maybe it’s our SELFISHNESS that keeps us from inside-out life. If I don’t share and don’t receive, no one else will and I can continue with my agenda. Not only is that boring. It’s lame.