Why is it so hard to say that I am good?
Registration for my workshop closes tomorrow at noon. I've been having a hard time talking about it.
Image description: Drawing of a hand holding a megaphone with sparkles coming out of it and dancing into the air.
Essay recording:
Context
I have tried to write you an essaylet approximately three times in the last week. Every time ends in tantrum, in (mostly) internal whining, in a dramatic case of the idunwannas.
Registration for my course on Cultivating a Non-religious Spiritual Practice ends tomorrow at noon. I should be, I guess, shouting that at the top of my lungs at hapless passersby on the street (or the social media equivalent of that). But instead I have been avoiding.
It’s not because I don’t believe it’s important—I can’t wait to hold this space, to see what feels possible for people who haven’t yet found a way into solace and peace and transcendence that works for them. I believe deeply that we need these practices to ground us and to hold us when the world is ugly and we are exhausted from trying to heal it. I believe that spiritual practice isn’t just for people who believe in something divine; it’s just as much for those of us who don’t believe in anything outside of what we can touch and see and feel ourselves. I could wax poetic about why this work is vital and important and tender to me for literal ages.
It’s not because I don’t believe in myself, either. I’ve led trainings for hundreds of people literally all over the world, on everything from storytelling to strategy. I have helped make complex political ideas accessible to people, helped energize people to put those ideas into action. The feedback I get from these things is overflowing with positivity. People say things like “best 45 minutes I’ve ever spent on Zoom” and “I was transformed.” I am very good at this.
Another thing it’s not? That I don’t believe I’m the right person to teach this material. I have been building a non-religious spiritual practice for myself for my entire life. Because of my early career in interfaith work, I have been in community with deeply religious people from many traditions, and many people have taught me about their practices. I have learned not to reproduce or appropriate those practices, but to listen for what it is about them that makes meaning for people, and to find practices that do that for me. In some ways, this is one of my life’s works.
Here’s what it is: the second I try to tell you those things in order to get you to give me money I become suddenly emotionally nauseous. I feel like some combination of a dubious life coach, your barely-acquaintance hawking her MLM wares, and a personal injury attorney.
There’s lots of things that make me feel this way: we’re supposed to be humble,1 and so telling you about why I’m great is uncomfortable. I feel afraid of rejection, to be sure. What if nobody wants this thing I think is good?2 That’s mortifying. I do not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or obligated, or worse, both. I do not want to pester. I don’t want to waste people’s time hearing about a thing that may or may not be at all relevant to their lives. I do not want to be that person who can only talk about the thing they’re selling, even though nobody wants to hear about it. I do not want to beg. Bleck bleck bleck. The whole thing makes me want to crawl into a hole.
Abstractly, I understand that this is normal, that everybody is doing it. I’m not really on social media, but my friend Tovah tells me that a big part of the critical discourse about it these days is, in fact, that “you don’t really find out anything about anyone other than whatever it is that they’re promoting.” I doubt I’d want to be a part of this phenomenon even if I were immersed in it, but it feels especially ridiculous to go to Instagram for the sole purpose of telling people about this thing. It’s like I have a gym membership I never use, and then one day I walk in, stand on the most centrally located weight bench, toss a bunch of flyers in the air, and immediately leave again.
Instead I want to, say, lift a heavy car off of a helpless animal, and for it to make people say “hey, I sure do wish that girl would teach me to lift heavy things.” What I want is to just walk around the world doing a good job at stuff and for that to be its own advertisement. Apparently this is unrealistic, at least at a scale that pays any of my bills.
The thing is, if one of my friends was promoting something and asked me to tell people about it, I would be truly elated. That I would shout from the rooftops: “Look! My brilliant friend is making a thing you can have! We should all feel so blessed and give them money for their thing so they can pay rent and keep making wonderful things!” I regularly do, in fact, shout about my friends’ work. When I’m on that side of the equation, I feel just so enthusiastic. It’s a treat to be able to support my loved ones, to know about the things they’re dreaming into being, to connect others to their magic. But somehow this doesn’t make asking my friends to tell their friends about my workshop any easier.
I so deeply wish it was easier, and not only because of the bill paying thing. I want to be able to write a little essay about how proud I am of this work I’m making without needing to torturously couch it in a rant about how awful self-promotion is. I want to feel uncomplicatedly good about saying that I’m good at stuff. I want to live in a world where it’s possible to take the time to make beautiful, wonderful things without needing to monetize them in order to survive.
But I can’t be anywhere other than where I am. So here you have it: registration for my course on Cultivating a Non-religious Spiritual Practice ends tomorrow at noon. You should join us. You should also forward this to a friend who might be into it. Or ‘gram it or whatever.3 If for no other reason than to put me out of my misery.
Stuff
This substack post about how it makes perfect sense that everything feels wrong and bad (including feeling happy or sad) while there is active genocide happening. Thanks to friend Alison for sharing it with me.
I’ve been working on thoughtfully choosing songs for these workshops; it feels important to be intentional about the soundscape of this experience. I don’t know if this one will make it in, but gosh… “Loosen, loosen, baby / You don’t have to carry / the weight of the world in your muscles and bones.”
On the lighter side of the last few weeks, I cannot stop talking about this piece from 2012. (How on earth does that seem like a simpler time?) Nobody can tell me for certain if I am a chaos muppet or an order muppet and I’m taking it as evidence that I’m an Enneagram 4.
Speaking of 2012, remember when we were all obsessed with this song?4
And of course, once again, here’s the link to register for Cultivating a Non-religious Spiritual Practice, which you must do by Friday November 3rd, 12pm Eastern Time.
At least women are.
This is, objectively, false. Firstly I made this thing because people asked for it, secondly several people have in fact registered for it, and third because even more people have told me they wish they could but can’t make the scheduling work this time around.
Is this the lingo? This makes me feel older than my back pain.
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