Lessons from Susan B.

By now, most of the known universe has witnessed the amazing performance on the Britain's Got Talent competition of Susan Boyle.

Beneath her frumpy, weathered exterior was this geyser of talent which erupted to the shock of everyone who viewed it for the first time. Shocking more, was that in a world of appearance-obsessed people, the unbelievable achievement of seeing millions exercise the ability to look beneath the surface and validate another still exists.

For me, it has been an inspiration resulting in my new epiphony for the year... "you don't die from being less than perfect." I've spent years living in a body which I neither admire or frankly, even recognize sometimes. I have performed daily rituals of dressing to camoflague this with the slight of hand of magical undergarments -- hoping the world might just not notice today that, yes, I have put on weight. And in the mirror are hundreds of products I religiously apply to shade and treat the places that time has marked on my face. With every one of these applications, I have endorsed the daily affirmation that I have now arrived at the place of total irrelevance because, gasp, I am not now, nor have I ever been -- perfect.

When I was in 6th grade, I began my passion for writing ... scrawling in pencil in a brown composition notebook my poems and thoughts which freely flowed back in those days. I wrote without worry about who would read, edit or even critique my words. It felt good just to let the words out of their cubicle and onto those blue lined sheets of paper.

I can't remember exactly when it happened that I was infected with the Self-Conscious Virus, but it seems that it locked up my will to write and sing and dance without wondering who was watching and ... what they thought. And so it was that decades came and went and here I am just now accepting that it might be okay to be less than perfect.

Susan Boyle has a lyric she sings in a song on her new album which says,

"And though I may not know the answers,

I can finally say I am free,
And if the questions led me here,

then I am who I was born to be."

Unwrapping the gift it is to hear Susan's voice sing has stirred in me an inspiration to leave my lifelong fear of rejection at the "side of the road". Today, I will write and sing -- and even dance. I will be content to do it for me and not for the audience full of rejection buzzers in their hands. I know I still will never be perfect at any of it, but I have stopped worrying about that now. I love the freedom I found to do it anyways.

“Are there not... Two points in the adventure of the diver: One—when a beggar, he prepares to plunge? Two—when a prince, he rises with his pearl? I plunge!” —Robert Browning