Be Your Best You

Seriously? Who the heck is that?

I feel this way frequently. Always shooting for personal excellence. Usually, falling a few miles short of it.

But what if… you didn’t have to be you at all. Just for an hour. You could be anyone you want, anyone at all. Have any attitude you want with zero repercussions. Enter into any situation you want.

Sky’s the limit.

This is the exercise I did this week in a poetry workshop for our boys’ school. And it was totally transformative. We wrote persona poems. I asked them to each bring in a small valued object and each child wrote from that object’s point of view.

They decided the tonality and attitude of the object and story they thought that object wanted to tell.

They blew me away.

One boy wrote bout his ski hat: “There’s lice and dandruff and people just stick their head in my mouth! I mean seriously? Who does that! Seriously!…” It went on and my paraphrasing does it little justice. It was hilarious and deeply creative.

One girl wrote from the point of view of her salted paddle racquet. She wrote: I have a spiky personality. Probably because people are always blaming me for losing points and missing shots…” It went on to be pithy and clever.

One boy forgot his object.

He could not find one in the room. Did not like any of my suggestions but kept following me around asking what he should do.

He liked none of my ideas. Looked at me as if I had a screw loose when I suggested that the laces on the football might be it trying to smile. I began getting mildly frustrated at what I perceived to be his unwillingness to be open-minded.

And then I realized, he sincerely had no idea what I was asking him to do.

So I asked if he had a pet, thinking it would not be as far a leap to take on the persona of a living creature. He had a dog so we talked about what the dog dreams about. It clicked. He wrote. And he shared it with the class.

He seemed kind of embarrassed after he read, his gaze low, his head tilted down.

His teacher commented to me after how amazing it was that he wrote something. And it hit me, out of nowhere.

He was the bravest kid in the class that day.

I went over to him, told him that.

“What you did today was amazing. Harder than anyone else. It’s easy to write when you have an idea. And it’s easy to just give up when you don’t, especially when no one will be checking, especially when it really doesn’t matter at all. But you didn’t.

You did one of the hardest things there is to do.

You persevered.

Even when it was really tough. Even when you thought there was no chance you were going to get it. THAT takes real courage. Right on.”

His head lifted, eyes too and he looked proud. But, I’m pretty sure our little poetry persona breakthrough had a much bigger impact on me.

I struggle with lots of things, every day.

I didn’t grow up feeling particularly proud of anything. I wasn’t super smart, athletic, outgoing, artistic or terribly attractive.

Even now, it takes something very big, like publishing an album or birthing a child–to elicit a feeling as grandiose as pride. Most things I do feel mediocre at best.

But I give it my all, even when I feel like a giant failure.

This past week though, with that boy, something inside me cracked, open.

I saw beyond my perceptions. I watched my frustration with him turn into compassion for him turn into championing of him turn into a passionate sense of being “in it” together.

Beyond the self-criticism and impatience and epic sense of self-disappointment something softened. The focus shifted slightly, from “eyes on the prize” to a deeper sense of character, integrity and inner resolve.

His persona made me happier with mine.