Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for.

And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

-Toni morrison, sula (1973)

becoming more alive

I remember I was speaking with a psychiatrist I met during one of the training programs I was a part of. I reached out to him after appreciating his reflections and thoughts during the lecture portion of our curriculum. During a Zoom meeting, I shared with him that I kind of feel called to create and share more, but I often feel like there’s this pressure to be perfect and pure and almost be this Jesus Christ-like-figure.

He listened. There was a pause.

“You know they killed him right?” he reminded me.

I chuckled, not because it was funny, but because I realized that oh yeah that’s right. You can be the most pure and perfect being, whether you see this as a story, truth, or something else, but you can be the most perfect being who’s here to support and say the perfect messages at all times and people will still rip you apart and say it’s your fault. People will still crucify you literally and metaphorically even if you do everything “right.”

As cliché and overused as this metaphor might be, I do feel like a caterpillar that’s increasingly getting uncomfortable in my cocoon. Yet, I’m  a part of many cocoons. And I’m finally shedding some of the messages I’ve internalized. For instance, I’m outgrowing a cocoon, whether from social or cultural upbringing or wherever, around this pressure to solely conform.

I had gone searching for a quote that I first encountered in Lisa Congdon’s text and then stumbled up on an article published on The Marginalian. The quote I’m referring to was attributed to Ben Shahn. In the beginning of her article titled On Nonconformity: Artist Ben Shahn’s Spirited Defense of Nonconformists as Society’s Engine of Growth and Greatness, Popova writes, “In such a groupthink society, Emerson cautioned, conformity is the most prized virtue, but whoever wishes to be a true person “must be a nonconformist.”

While I found this article helpful in terms of finally understanding my struggle with belonging as maybe more a matter of just not fitting in certain spaces, I also started to realize maybe my discomfort is not my own. Originally from Shahn’s article Nonconformity published in the Atlantic in September 1957 issue, Popova quoted the following in her essay, which felt helpful in this particular chapter I find myself in:

But it seems to be less obvious somehow that to create anything at all in any field, and especially anything of outstanding worth, requires nonconformity, or a want of satisfaction with things as they are. The creative person — the nonconformist — may be in profound disagreement with the present way of things, or he may simply wish to add his views, to render a personal account of matters.

As you can probably tell from the last post, maybe without knowing I’ve been searching for teachers and environments that can give me tools to build the worlds I imagine, whether those worlds are via photography, paints, movement, words, storytelling, therapy, spirituality, and even business principles.

Probably before everything with my mom, we might have had a different conversation. But I find myself itching as if I’m wearing some uncomfortable clothing. For instance, I was going to circle around to something since I paused a couple of activities, but then I saw a post. I was like oh I don’t think this aligns with what I’m trying to build anymore.