Last week, I was taken aback last week when an old friend messaged me to say he’d been both touched and surprised by a radio interview of mine in which I talked openly about dealing with the disappointments and heartaches of my recent life. “You always seem so on top of you game,” he wrote.
That comment actually stung—not because it was mean. But because because he and I only “see” each other on Facebook. That place where it’s so easy to compare our lives to one another’s. To see the family pictures and funny updates and to assume the other person’s got it all together. That we’re at the top of our games.
As someone who’s just released a book called Grumble Hallelujah—with an opening scene of me crying on a kitchen floor saying, “I hate my life”—I assured that friend that I most certainly am not on top of my game. At least, not on top of every game. But there is a tension we live with, no.
Because although I want to be honest about the major disappointments and setbacks of life, I do also want to share the upsides of life. The dreams come true. I want to be able to live and share a complete life—which includes the failures and the successes. The dull and the exciting. The times when I am on top of my game. And the times where I’m sort of middling it. If not 100 percent pure clueless.
Really, this is the gist of Grumble Hallelujah and the learning to love life even when it lets us down—being able to share both the good and the bad. But mostly, the truth.
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