“When humans create,” he said, “it’s a messy process.”
I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to those words last Sunday morning. I was more concerned, I admit, about the harmonies in the next piece of music we were to sing. Besides, I’m not so good at “messy”.
As little girls, we’re taught that messy is bad. We are taught to sit nicely, speak politely and generally not be the whirling dervishes our brothers allowed to be. After all, boys will be boys, they tell us.
And so it sticks. As a grown woman, I like things to be ordered. In my house, most things have a place, and with the exception of the one room I just throw things into and close the door, it is usually relatively tidy. At work, I’m always encouraging my team to save documents in our shared area, so we all know exactly where to find important pieces of information.
I like my life like that too. No big surprises; I’ve had enough of those bumps in the road to last me a lifetime. I’ve devoted a good deal of time and effort over the past decade to ensure relative calm for my kids. I’ve tried to make sure those bumps in the road – the metaphorical mess – didn’t impact them often them in negative ways.
I didn’t think I’d really taken in the minister’s words, but they’ve been bouncing around in the back of my mind since Sunday. Building something new, changing something, reinventing something – or someone – requires work. So it’s bound to be messy. If it’s not, nothing’s changing. In fact, it’s rusting, like Frank L Baum’s Tin Man.
And I guess that’s exactly the point. Not only for the congregation of my church, which certainly has its own building to do, but for me too.
There was a time when, despite the ingrained lessons of childhood, I did let life get messy. I took chances. I put myself out there – from public speaking to international exchanges, my teen years were ones of great personal discovery. I made a career of dealing with “messy” things, working in Communications in controversial industries. Early in my working years, I was actually a member of a disaster emergency response team – we used to joke about Kath and the guys in the “DERT”. And while I can often “hide” behind the spokespeople I train and provide messaging for, I am still occasionally in the line of questioning.
I’ve been reading books recently by Joan Anderson. In one, A Year By The Sea, she describes the year she ran away from her life to rediscover who she was. Sounds quite appealing, some days! She wrote a follow-up a decade later: The Second Journey, in which she writes about lure of the familiar and how comforting — and yet stagnating – it is. She contrasts that with the concept of “self-cultivation”.
That resonated with me. I love to garden and cultivate the perennial flowers in my back yard. The idea of cultivating myself, while slightly selfish, is an intriguing one. Safe is getting boring.
Gardening has sometimes led to literal messes — I once shovelled a couple of cubic yards of dirt at 9 months pregnant trying to force my body go to into labour. It didn’t work, but it sure was messy! I had a 22 month old at the time, and he revelled in climbing up the dirt pile. He too, was a delightful mess by the end of it. I grew up camping, and as anyone who has also done so knows, nothing is so clean as washing in a dirty puddle.
I’ve certainly encouraged my own kids to take chances and get messy. My eldest is considering a backpacking trip to Thailand this summer, which is certainly outside his comfort zone. My middle one is looking at a career in a field that’s not traditional for men. My youngest has performed on international stages with her choir. They’re pushing themselves. They’re growing – as they should be at their ages.
Somewhere along the line in my personal life though, I got scared. Scared to take a chance. Status quo became acceptable. What I knew became sufficient. Putting myself out there became too much work.
And that’s not good. It means that I’m not growing. I’m stagnating.
I recently counselled my son on looking for the job that scares you a little bit – that’s the one that allows you to grow the most. It’s time I took my own advice. It’s time to put myself out there, make changes, try new things and push my boundaries. I had dinner with good friends last night and they’re on board to help me.
It’s time my life got a little more messy.
