In defense of honesty

via

"  We know that labels are for jars, and we know that we are not jars.  "

Hey, ain't that the truth. That's something that has been laid on my heart lately, so to speak.

Life is about living in the midst of contradictions. A friend of mine recently listed out several of life's contradictions nicely: 

. Be humble, but not too self-depricating

. Be confident, but not too prideful

. Be authentic about your struggles, but don't complain too much

. Be always striving, but be okay with not having it all together

. Be fierce about holding yourself to standards, but don't feel like a failure when you fall short

The list goes on. Life is full of contradictions, and there are several ways to live in the midst of that pretty well. 

Likewise, we ourselves are full of contradictions. We present ourselves one way, and maybe it's even authentic, but we are entirely different in the vulnerable and lonely moments. Here's me for example: 

I'm an extrovert...

  ... but sometimes I need a lot of alone time.

I'm very illogical and spontaneous, and let my life be run entirely by my emotions...

  ... but I can rationalize and logically analyze my way out of having a crush on any guy. 

I'm an art major...

  ... but today I went to the studio harshly bent on procrastinating my way out of making anything.

In some of my more honest and vulnerable moments, when no one is watching, I have: 

. winked and blown kisses to myself in the mirror

. talked out loud to myself about what I'm going to eat for breakfast

. cried at car commercials

. tried to lick my elbow, cross my eyes and move them apart, put my feet behind my ears

. attempted really high and out-of-range singing, ending with vicious squeaks

. done some really ugly dancing

. sprawled on the floor laughing at myself for falling over nothing

. sat cross-legged on top of my desk, eating a bowl of cereal and conducting a symphony of violinists with my spoon. 

No one sees those things. They only see 145 characters of my best-presented self, a sliver of my best moment from the day, presented as much more enjoyable then it actually was, my most staged photos of my food, a rendition of my "favorite quote" that I definitely found on the Internet seconds before. 

We live in a society that makes it so easy to see selectively. 

But we are so much more complex than that.

We are the A+ students who go to see Indie concerts by themselves on the weekends, we are the jocks who play Monopoly with their parents, we are the broken and beautiful people who are still deeply capable of loving because we all have flaws and honest moments. 

We can take our labels off and put them back on our jars, if we are type A (my type B friends, throw them away and relish the hodgepodge of jars you've collected). 

We can be one thing and also something totally else, and we can let people see that. We have permission to be flawed, because those people are way more interesting.