Eulogy for the Curated Self
Poetry, Perfectionism, and Language with No Defenses
Eulogy for the Curated Self
Dawn is breaking over the horizon with
All of the gentle light you cannot let in.
Your aperture, fashioned for expansiveness and intimacy,
is now fixed in the button-pushing presence that exists
nowhere at all.
The measure of your attention is now occupied by that bitter,
faceless other holding an invisible knife,
when it was made for vast possibilities unconstrained
by the minds of others,
unknown even to your own.
Your temples have become altars of anxiety,
where the tension of the false mask eclipses
the face of the one that is never not
smiling back at you, radiant since before you were born.
Abandon your unquenchable ambition,
and begin to drink from the stream of true generosity,
whose flow beckons you into even greater aliveness
through its unquestionable abundance.
Give up the belief that anyone could ever take
anything away from you that you already didn't need.
Allow everything that was not yours to be ground into dust,
which catches in the golden light, like
the summertime mosquitoes born for just this moment,
floating,
before being consumed by the fledgling robin,
or falling to the hungry earth.
Know, now more than ever, that you were
meant to fall apart, to be exquisitely exposed,
to feed the one thing that is, and ever will be,
perfect.
This past week I had three conversations with three different people, offering the kind of reflections that can only happen with a strong dose of trust and intimacy. All three conversations offered the same reflection that I could not help but take into the marrow of my being.
The reflections can be summarized in one bitter pill: I am presenting a curated self to the world. A self that is struggling under the weight of my own ambition, striving, and ultimately, ego. A self that is keeping me from inhabiting the fullness of my being, which others can see, yet which I hide under various masks: professionalism, authority, “success.”
All of them serve a purpose. All of them, I have been trained or indoctrinated into. Yet all of them offer only a narrow, curated image of myself to the wider world.
I wasn’t surprised. But I was relieved. Like putting down a heavy backpack, these conversations felt like an invitation to step more fully into a more true way of being.
Another word for this is perfectionism, which is really an elaborate, highly adaptive strategy that many creative people use to avoid vulnerability.