Walk On Podcast Episode 57 : The Importance of Being Earnest

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“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Whenever I’ve met someone I would describe as earnest, I feel an overwhelming affection for them immediately. I always enjoy a person who wears their personality on their sleeve. That is not to say that they are unkind or one of those “that’s just the way I am” types of unapologetic bullies, but just… that they don’t operate from a place of pretense. Earnestness is seen as a kind of seriousness, and I think that being authentic does take a certain amount of seriousness. But being earnestly funny can exist, right? Earnestly sad? Earnestly awkward?

I think it’s a seriousness in regard to a sense of self.

Oscar Wilde, I think, was a good poster child for an earnest way of being—full of quips and elegance and glamour and style—the kind of person who is never not invited to a dinner party. He wasn’t boring, he didn’t take himself too seriously, he wasn’t humorless. He just was who he was, with whoever he was with.

Living in the capitalist society we do, where everything surrounds work, we are often encouraged to split ourselves into digestible chunks. This friend gets the comedian me, but none of the emotions, this hookup gets the sex kitten with none of the depth, work gets the committed professional, responsible me without personal boundaries, my parents get the perfect child they can be proud of, never the trainwreck… I tend to think that this kind of emotional labor A) dehumanizes/objectifies us, which according to spiritual teacher and mystic Osho is the most unkind thing you can do to someone else and B) is a way of attempting to live up to the impossible expectation of perfection. And, by now, we should all know how I feel about that.

Are we not multifaceted beings? Each and every single one of us??? Why are we not allowed to express that truth of ourselves?? Why is it even off-limits within our own self-perception? And (as above, so below) if we understand how it hurts us not to be seen, heard, and understood completely, why do we hold others to these same standards?

“Just be yourself!!” we tell a friend who’s nervous about a date, which they shrug off because it’s become such a cliché that it almost feels like bad advice. Many times, our real, vulnerable, softest parts were rejected in early childhood by the very people society tells us are supposed to love us inherently unconditionally. So we learn, very quickly, to mask (which is what we call it in the autistic community).

I’m not saying that masking is bad—we all do it for survival. Think of the phony, robotically pleasant customer service voice you develop when you work that kind of job. “My pleasure!!” nobody says that IRL lol. I once had a boss tell me that I was never allowed to say “no problem” because it implied that it wasn’t a problem right now, but that it might be a problem at another time and that might offend a customer. Wuh-WHAT??????????????????

I’m not saying that you should walk around this cruel and judgmental world (or post on the even more cruel and judgmental internet) with your soul laid bare—but I am saying, understand that you are a unique and beautiful expression of the universe, that those things you consider flaws might be the things that someone else loves the most about you, that anything that is destructive or harmful about you is totally healable, and that there is nothing shameful about the essence of you.

Practicing vulnerability is just that, a practice. Avoidance is so indoctrinated into us as the way we should be; that not feeling = strength, that simply being yourself is a forever process of unpacking, unlearning, and relearning how to be committed to and to be earnest (lol) about being earnest.

See children as your teacher. Young children are completely oblivious to self-consciousness. If they want to walk around with their arms tucked in their sleeves, pretending to be a t-rex, they’ll just do it, judgmental stares be damned. If they want to do a lil dance while walking down the sidewalk, they will get their groove on!! If they are feeling upset with a friend, they’ll tell them—and the friend might cry about it or express their upset feelings back, but they definitely won’t reply “ew. cringe.”

We are sooooo judgmental. We are soooo guarded. Loosen up, my friends. Allow yourself to be a little messy, a little flawed. Make an effort to communicate clearly. When someone hurts your feelings, tell them. If someone expresses that you hurt theirs, receive it. Wear what you’ve always wanted to but were too afraid of what other people would say. Dance like no one’s watching, live laugh, and motherfucking love!!!!

But really.

You are so much more beautiful and more complicated and more human and more divine and you realize. Allow yourself to be. Life is so much more lonely when no one knows the full, real, flawed, gorgeous you. If it’s only one person, one friend, one family member, even if it’s just on the internet, let them in. Let them see. Feel how much more loved that makes you feel. Feel how much more fully that fills your cup. Witness the totality of someone else. Do so without judgment, without projection, without the discomfort of second-hand embarrassment.

The idea that we should make ourselves smaller to fall in line with the status quo is just a construct, just a tool to make us more efficient workers. Fuck that. Break free.

Heavily traumatized, sarcasm and avoidance are the way we are encouraged to move through the world. Capitalism doesn't allow time for vulnerability and processing the depths of our emotions, so we cope by walling up our softest parts. Fear of rejection keeps our societal masks in place. What if we all agreed to let our guards down? What is the importance of being earnest? Listen here.