Don't try to be good, be true.

Wake-Up Call #25

4:30am. I’m not sleeping.

For years, people have told me they love listening to the Good Life Project podcast.

“I learn so much, your voice is so soothing…it just puts me right to sleep.”

Always wonder how to respond to that.

My version is the lovely and learned insight teacher, Tara Brach, who I’ve had the great pleasure of interviewing. So alive with kindness and wisdom.

But, when I listen to her podcast, I learn a bit, then I’m out. Like Tylenol PM with a lesson (sorry Tara, love you!).

So, I decide to listen to Tara's recent interview with Colorado poet,

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

, hoping it'll put me back to sleep. It's a moving conversation, rooted in an exploration of grief. Rosemerry reads from her new book of poems, The Unfolding.

Before she get there, she shares a bit about her impulse toward poetry, why she writes and shares a poem a day, and has for many years. The practice began in 2006 as a dare from a friend. Write a poem a day for 30 days, then send it to two friends who would do the same. It continues, but to a larger community, to this day.

She adds:

What I learned in those first 30 days…was that I couldn't write something good every day.

This was something that had been really important to me, to write something good before that. Which meant I often didn't write at all. So when I started writing every day and realized, oh, you can't write something good every day, I started to realize, well, then what am I doing?

And it shifted the whole reason for writing. And even maybe just the way I showed up at a piece of paper and I thought, okay, could I write something true every day? And that I could do….

It opened everything up about it as a practice. And it began changing the way I saw the world. And ultimately, over the years, I've come to decide or to know that the poem itself is this byproduct, and that the real practice is sitting with a blank page and wondering, what's here? What's true? What's the next true thing?…. I think, if it weren't that, I couldn't have possibly continued, but that is infinitely sustainable.”

I start to tear up.

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s now 4:38am, I’m still awake, craving something sweet, and questioning if I have to pee.

Still, I feel the deepest nooks of my being exhale.

As a maker, a writer, a creator, someone who feels and, in turn, expresses not only as a way to share my inner life, but also an attempt to weave a thread of collective experience that might help others feel less alone, I so get this.

Good is hard.

As someone with a clearly defined (read, “unmeetable’) sense of taste, and an often indefensible bent toward closing the gap between what I feel and my ability to share it in a way that meets taste’s bar, I can be wildly unforgiving to myself.

“Not good enough,” was a common theme of my youth. Still is. Not in the imposed voice of a mother, father, teacher, or preacher. This voice comes from within. Though, with age, it’s finding more kindling for grace along the way.

Rosemerry’s words—I can’t always be good, but I can always be true—changed something in me. For me.

What if the metric was true, not good?

That bar, I can meet far more readily, and consistently. Even on days when my head is pounding, I’m burned out, cranky, overtired, and woefully under-chocolated (often the reason for all the above).

In those moments, I’m not capable of good. But, true? Sure.

Not a day goes by where I can’t honestly take a beat to feel. To witness. To inhabit, then incant what is real for me. To give it words, my words. Then, if I choose, give it away.

What a relief to believe that just might be enough.

Not only as a maker and a writer.

But as a father.

A husband.

A brother.

A son.

A friend.

A co-creator.

A human trying to be.

What if the measure of your unfolding was truth, not excellence?

What if life’s invitation was not to fly higher, but to get closer to the bone?

With a whole lotta love & gratitude,

Jonathan

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Wake-Up Call #25 | Choosing True Over Good.

Take a beat. A breath. Look around. Listen. Feel. Then, go inside. Do the same.

What is real for you in this moment? True?

Big thing, little thing. Doesn’t matter.

Don’t worry about whether you feel skilled or resourced to offer it in a way that makes others feel, or clears the bar you’re judgey inner-critic sets. Don’t worry about whether it’s good, artful, beautiful.

Just notice. What is real? Alive for you?

Give it words. Speak it. Write it. Then reflect on it.

Not whether it’s good, but simply true.

If it is, that’s enough.

And, if you’re inclined, share what’s coming up in the comments.