“We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at
hiding it, that's all.”
― John Hughes
Songbird
The other day I saw an awe inspiring video of a brief TED talk
by Ash Beckham that has lingered with me since I saw it. Ash is lesbian – and
the video started out as the tale of an experience probably fairly common to
gay men and women everywhere…being questioned by a child about their gender.
But there’s no way that’s even the point of the speech because Ms. Beckham
turned her own experience into a totally human experience, one that, whether
we’ll admit it or not, we all share. It has nothing to do with whether we are
gay or straight – it’s simply about life.
Ms. Beckham made the point beautifully that we all have
closets too and coming out of them is HARD. So I got to thinking…what are my
closets and more to the point, what’s in them? What secrets are hidden there
that, if left in the dark, become monsters that haunt my dreams at night? How
long have I lived in certain closets that contain those “skeletons” I don’t
want to talk about or admit to. Ms. Beckham defines a closet as “nothing more
than a hard conversation,” one we’re afraid to have because it might cost us
something or someone we care about might turn his/her back on us once we have
that conversation. She gave the examples of telling someone you have cancer or having
a conversation about infidelity. And I can see those would be hard
conversations to have. But there are other conversations that are equally hard
to have – conversations about our feelings, our self-image, conversations about
what it is that gives our life meaning or what we think defines us.
Maybe our closets are dark spaces because we’ve spent our
entire lives doing and being who others thought we should be. We never had the
courage or enough self-love to say, “Look, I don’t want to be a pharmacist or a
broker or a nurse. I want to paint. I want to sing. I don’t care if I struggle
to make ends meet – those are the things that give my life meaning.” Perhaps
not saying those things is why we have mid-life crises. Imagine how different
our lives might have been had we said to our partners…”I love you, yes, and I
want to spend my life with you. But for that to be a good life, a happy life,
we both need to be ourselves completely. This is MY dream (to be an artist, a
musician, a songwriter, a poet). What is yours?”
Certainly that doesn’t mean tossing responsibility to the
wind, neglecting our loved ones or abandoning those who matter to us. But over
time, if we keep stuffing our authentic selves into the closets of our lives,
pretty soon those suppressed dreams become the monsters that destroy our peace
of mind, our chance at happiness. Abandoned dreams cause resentment and anger
or force us to lie to ourselves and say, “Well, I wasn’t good enough at it
anyway.” Or they leave us grief-stricken in our later years that there is
nothing of ourselves in what we leave behind, feeling that it’s too late to
open that closet door now. The great mythologist/philosopher, Joseph Campbell
espoused a philosophy that should be taught from nursery school right on
through school – “Follow your bliss.” That means pursue those avenues of work,
relationship, recreation that truly bring you joy. Challenged by Bill Moyers
about whether that was a practical thing to do, Campbell added, “If you follow
your bliss, the money will follow.” That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can
raise a family well by joining the starving artist parade from hotel to hotel
selling paintings “some as low as $7.95.” But if we’ve always wanted to be an
artist, felt inside that that is who we are, then we must pursue that with our
whole hearts wherever and whenever we can, including it in every possible way
in our lives. So what if the kitchen table is covered with splotches of oil
paint, or the desk is a hoarder’s nest of story drafts and unfinished poems? Whatever
dream you’ve hauled into the closet and locked yourself in, it’s time to have
that hard conversation with the people in your life. It’s time to say, “I am an
artist, I am a writer, I am a singer…” and it’s time to mean it. Swing those
closet doors wide open but don’t do it anticipating a rousing reception or
constant affirmation or even financial success. Do it – because it’s YOU and
that’s who you have to be. After all, as Ash Beckham says, “A closet is a dark
and lonely…a lousy place to live.”
THE NOTE NOT SUNG –
What is the note if not sung,
the thought if not shared?
If I do not sing my song where it might be heard,
or speak my thought where it might do good,
paint my dream where it might be seen,
then of what use is it?
I do not “own” my song, my thought, my art
in the sense that I can keep it to myself -
for if I do that, it loses any value at all
toward the expansion of the human spirit
…including my own.
©Lianne
Schneider 2013
If you’d like to see Ash Beckham’s entire speech (it’s about
10 minutes) you can find it at
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