Disheveled is not a credential

I was talking to my friend Diana after we’d just completed a yoga class that had started at 6am.

Some friends had given us both just the teensiest bit of shit for being willing to get up at 5am to make a 6am yoga class. There seemed to be a consensus among some of our friends that people who do things like get up for early yoga classes were a bit too straight-laced, and that doing such things made us into completely un-relatable human beings. These observations from others were lumped in with other things Diana and I are fans of: meditation, personal growth, etc.

This reaction struck me as a backlash that was not particularly…kind. We talked about what it seemed people were assuming. The dominant assumption seemed to be that Diana and I were not really this way, but that we were playing a kind of part, doing things to try to appear better or making personal growth into a sort of vanity project—and that this was not worth the effort.

The people saying this were touting their own disheveled, messy, awkward moments in life as their identities, as if those were more authentic. The assumption seemed to be that Diana and I had to be inauthentic. It was inconceivable to those people that we might want to put forth the effort to get up early, or go to yoga, or invest in personal growth.

But here’s the thing: disheveled is not a credential. For Diana and I, the investment in personal growth isn’t inauthentic, though I understand that for some people it can be. I would just point out (in saying that disheveled is not a credential) that it is no more authentic to play the role of, “Oh, I’m just so messy and awkward and disheveled.”

That, too, can be a performance.

Also, no one has it all together. Someone getting up early or reading a personal growth book isn’t an indication that they “have it all together.” It’s just…someone deciding to take a particular course of action with their life.

Really, what we’re talking about here is the ways in which people use an identity system to justify themselves as “better than.” Some people use the identity system of “I’m so pure and spiritual and full of personal growth” to feel better than. Other people use “I’m so awkward and messy and disheveled and therefore I’m more authentic” to feel better than.

Why you do what you do—the intent behind it—speaks a lot to how helpful it is for your life.

The Difference

Yes–there is something really powerful in owning where our vulnerabilities and weaknesses are. Sometimes, that’s what people are doing when they say that they’re disheveled or messy or awkward or not feeling so put together. This has value. What I hear people say most often about when others expose their rough patches is that it makes it easier to accept their own–and that’s true for me, too.

The line blurs when it starts to either directly or energetically create divisions, with the “people who have it all together” on one side getting labeled as conceited or arrogant, while the crowd who views themselves as “more real because we don’t have it all together” on the other, using “disheveled” as some kind of credential for authenticity.

No one is winning at that game.

Authenticity is living your vision for your life, and that’s what you make it.

Burn brightly, go forth with courage, own the disheveled bits with transparency as they arise, and–don’t make the flaws into yet another identity to disentangle from.