Seriously!? Sometimes not.

When I was a fifth grade teacher, many years ago, I fell flat on my butt in front of my students.  I had been sitting at my desk, and when I got up to move to the front of the classroom - I slid on some loose papers piled next to the desk and fell.  It was a classic slip-on-the-banana-peel scenario.  While I encouraged creativity and fun in the classroom, I also prided myself on classroom management and order.  As such, I was the benevolent but undisputed leader of our community of learners.  So when I crashed to the floor that day, all twenty-eight of those tween faces looked at me expectantly for a cue.  Recovering from the shock of the fall, I smiled, "I'm okay - you can laugh."  And with a collective sigh of relief, they burst into laughter.  I laughed at myself too.   

I love to remember that story.  It reminds me of a situation when I made a split-second decision to not take myself too seriously.  Because often I do take myself way too seriously and over-think things.  I know that this type of thinking limits me and was reminded of that recently.  I've been listening to Magic Lessons with Elizabeth Gilbert, a podcast series inspired by her book Big Magic.  In Episode #5 "Access Your Joy," Gilbert talks to a songwriter who is creatively stuck.  The songwriter is understandably grieving the death of her sister and finding it hard to return to her work.   The conversation comes around to the idea that the songwriter takes her work too seriously.  Gilbert says, "I think it's possible that you might have a little bit too much respect for music."  She adds that the songwriter might belong to a "category of people who cannot make art very freely because they have too much reverence for it." 

Maybe I'm in that category of people.  Maybe I have a little much too respect for writing.  As an avid reader, I've been inspired, moved, transported, entertained and informed by the written word in so many forms.  So I imagine the readers of my own words.  And I imagine that everything that I share or publish on my blog should be...finished or polished or important or unique or special.  I worry that someone will read what I write and say, "so what?" 

But so what if they say "so what?"  And when it comes down to it, I'm the one imposing the big expectations on myself by taking myself too seriously.  That doesn't mean I don't want to practice, critique, edit, learn from mistakes and improve.  But none of that will occur if I take things too seriously to begin and continue.  If we take ourselves too seriously - in our work, in our communities, in our relationships - we may prevent ourselves from moving forward.  When we take ourselves too seriously, we may prevent ourselves from connecting with others, like I did with my students when we laughed together all those years ago.

We have to be willing to fall. 
To slip on the banana peel. 
To get up again. 
To move forward.   
And sometimes to laugh at ourselves along the way.