Cringe and the Benefits of It

There’s growth-worthy cringe and then there’s suffer-through cringe.

I’m spending more of my time in the growth-worthy and less in the suffer-through.

I believe in all humans.

This makes me unpalatable to a lot of humans and categorizes me amongst a group that I’d rather be with than against, so I’m getting more and more comfortable sitting with this and not feeling bad about letting go of the spaces that have told me my whole life that there was something to gain in the suffering through.

I do not want the tolerance for cringe to be lost. It’s the tolerance, to what aim, for what benefit?

If the benefit is ego and not the whole, then I’ll pass.

I’m here for the whole, and it’s when focusing here that the growth-worthy cringe is not only palatable. It’s something that, once experienced, feels like the source from which all satiation is made possible.

Without it, I will always feel disconnected from a cringe that feels worthy of the suffering of my design. I am learning to love myself as a Gift of God, His Glorious Design, not mine. The more I lean into this, the less I’m afraid to play with color and create the spaces I feel called to create and inhabit. It’s in these spaces I believe more people will discover the power of the whole, whatever that is and however that looks for them.

We’re losing out on so much in the spaces created and inhabited by our egos. I’m here for the spaces that let the inner kids, the humans before the selves, come out and play, to rediscover or discover anew what life has to offer.

A few weeks ago I witnessed a tragic incident, one that is very common in the wilds of suburbia. A mother duck and her baby ducklings were crossing the road during peak afternoon traffic and while a collective group of cars avoided causing tragedy, a low-riding sports car could not. I’ve become quite a birder in recent months, and I cannot say that this did not feel like a bad omen. I had seen a blue heron earlier just above this same spot. A block south, and around a week prior, a goose lost its partner and returned to the median day in and day out for weeks, hoping for the partner, but again, tragic despair for that partnership pair.

The incident is, on one hand, a wake-up call to the nature of our local ecosystem as it relates to traffic patterns and the wildlife we share the roads with here in Columbia, MD. The other part of it was that in this tragic moment, the collective cars on the road all hit brakes. Those before me were looking back, and some pulled over and quickly flashed hazards, as if there was something any of us could do. It was this moment. The group of adults all halted in our cars. The collective experience of horror, tragedy, outrage, the car that hit the family, the rest of us, the whole moment was, without words, an experience shared and felt as a group.

This experience. The group experience. The halting. The witnessing. The shaming. The sadness and wishing, if only I were a few cars ahead, I wouldn’t have known. The gratitude for not being one of the cars behind and having to know what I am grateful I did not need to figure out how to avoid knowing. The shared wondering of what others are experiencing or thinking, because the experience is quite physically still rattling through your body.

I will most certainly never know anyone else who was in this moment with me and yet, this moment is still a collectively shared experience no matter the differentiating impact encountered in each car. The hazard lights.

I live for these moments. Not the tragedy of those baby ducklings and mama. That is something to figure out if the county can navigate a wildlife crossing sign for the next spring busload to stand a chance. I live for the moments that create shared meaning. I live for the opportunity to foster an understanding that no matter where we are, we are impacting those around us in the spaces we inhabit. We all have presence. We all have a responsibility for this and to how it impacts the whole of our society.

How do you not operate from ego but also stay mindful of self? Or is it that in this mindfulness, you keep the ego at bay? I don’t know. As an aspiring performance autoethnographer, this is where I sit. Between the world of I and the world of myself in relationship to the spaces and people I share it with. My story is as much about me as it is about the world I inhabit, the people, the places, the values, the cultures, the known and unknown that surround all of us all the time.

What a messy travesty we all are, and yet, that’s God’s beauty. His Beautifully Mysteriously Intrinsically Curious Design. The human species.

Thank you for giving me space to be human with you. Here’s to being more human together. If that sounds like something of interest to you, please join me over at Always Welcome: A Social Arts Salon. Here, I’m doing the active work of building a practice of understanding and invite you to join me. The more, the richer for us all.