we need you to be weird(er)
The other day I was meeting with a client. (Side note: the word “client” always sounds more formal than I mean it, but I can’t figure out another word? Help!? What do you use?!) I was guiding a meditation at the beginning of the reading like I do every single time I meet with someone, and I felt self-conscious. I always feel self-conscious. Every single time I do it. I think, this person will think this is weird. They will think it’s not grounded enough and they will think I am a flaky person and they will therefore reject anything useful I might have to offer.
I am continually releasing self-consciousness over and over and over around being weird. Around not being considered “rational” enough. Because some of the adults in my life conflated my sensitivity with irrationality when I was a child. They confused my crying with grandiose emotionality, instead of the completely rational response it was to not being listened to at all.
So every time I lead a guided meditation, I pass through a moment of worry about what the listener/s will think. At this point, it doesn’t stop me. I notice it. I name it to myself. I keep going. One of the ways I keep going is I tell myself that ONE OF MY JOBS IN LIFE IS TO BE WEIRD.
I befriend and also hire other people to be weird with me (read: healers), to help me raise my own permission level to be weirder. So I can imagine that some people also in turn hire me to help them remember how essential their own weirdness is to humanity’s well-being.
I happened to say something about this feeling of self-consciousness with that client on that day, after the guided meditation. And they said, “This is the most sane thing I will do all day. This is the most rational thing I will do all day.” This was at the beginning of their work day in a very “rational” profession.
When they said this it broke the spell (again, for the hundredth time), it reminded me - what I’m calling “weird” is not even weird. A meditation in which we acknowledge the energy always moving through our bodies and between us, is not weird. Looking inward and beyond what we can see, looking to the cosmos to make sense of all of this, asking question, using our imaginations to heal - these things are not weird. They are old. They are human. They are essential and in fact most people I meet with know that their wellness is dependent on doing these things more, just like we intuitively know doing these things more re-attunes us to our collective needs and helps us more effortlessly live within our means - means as in immediate and means as in planetary. And in fact most of the reason we are meeting is to try to remember / find ways to include these things more in our lives!
As long as we live in a society in which these things are considered weird, we need to be weirder. Especially when we consider where “rationality” has gotten us. Look at this hellscape! Our obsession with rationality and our (my) fear of not being viewed rational has contributed to the hellscape that we find ourselves in called capitalism (which is literally the most irrational thing of all time, btw). And all the other concurrent adjacent hellscapes.
Our world needs my weirdness and your weirdness. By “our world” I mean us. I mean we need this. I mean I need this. We need people brave enough to risk their reputation to help us break the spell of what we describe as “rational.” We need you to be weird. We need you to not hold back on your weird. We need to support each other in coming out in our weirdness, so that what is truly weird, as in, totally f-ed up, will not be called “normal” anymore.
Some people will probably not like the guided meditation. Some people will probably think it means I’m flaky or too out there or not rational enough. I’m willing to risk that, to remind us of the necessity of being weird(er), to invite you to the free and loving land of weirdness we might inhabit together, where we might save ourselves, together.
Thanks for all the ways you’re being weird right now. I really feel we need you.
with love,
Sarah
