From Pinterest
Years ago, there was an ad (Nike?) that I just loved. It read:
You are born. And oh, how you wail! Your first breath is a scream. Not timid or low, but selfish and shattering, with all the force of waiting nine months under water. Your whole life should be like that: An announcement.
I tore it out when I saw it and plastered it on my vision wall in my bedroom, my eyes focused on those words: an announcement. Could I live my life like an announcement? And would the way I lived my life be worthy of an announcement?
I am reminded of that ad when I watch Happy, in his full self-possession, move through the world. He is irrepressible, embodied joy, electric. He, indeed, lives his life as an announcement. He’s not scared to make an announcement, and he is certainly not scared that his announcement isn’t good enough. Just by being, his announcement is special, he reminds me.
And though I am his mom and am inclined to think he’s special, what I know to be true is that every single child begins that way- we all begin self-possessed and confident about our announcement. All of us come into this world playing big, not small. We don’t suppress our cries or laughs or joys. We don’t think badly of ourselves. We live life as an announcement and what we have to announce feels worthy, valuable, like a gift to the world.
But, too often, somewhere on the way to adulthood, something shifts. Our sense of our own brilliance fades. Our understanding of our own beauty dims. Our announcement is quieted. Maybe it was the media that overwhelmed us. With instant access to information, with thousands of images shot at us every day, maybe we digested and internalized too much of the scrutiny. Maybe it was an unintended slight that stung us or a comment that someone delivered flippantly that we have held onto forever. Maybe it was not being chosen for this or being ignored by them, maybe it was a loss so significant that it still seems like our soul is empty from it. Maybe it was the way our body matured into adulthood that felt like a betrayal, or the way that it didn’t.
Whatever it may have been that stole away that central understanding of our inner and outer brilliance, I refuse to believe that we can’t get it back. And, even more than that, I believe it is crucial that we, in fact, do get it back. The world’s needs are too great and each of us has some role we are meant to be playing in addressing them. For any one of us to play small means our world stays broken. For every minute we spend in the mirror, lamenting what’s wrong with us, the world’s wrongs keep spinning by. For everything left unsaid, the people most meant to hear that message are denied even longer. It is all cyclical and all of our announcements are a necessary part of our process.
And, so, today I want you to ask yourself this critical question.
What is your announcement? You are being given, over and over again, an audience of one. Every single person in this world is going to sit down in front of you and give you the time you need to make your announcement. What is it you must make sure each person knows. What do you need him to understand? What do you need her to grasp? What is your announcement?
My announcement, boiled down and stripped bare is this: the world needs each one of us as an essential element in its healing- in our healing. And to do that, we must get on with our own healing, live our passion and purpose and give our gifts to the world. We must begin administering our particular brand of CPR to the world and its suffering.
What is your announcement? Or even if you don’t know all of it, what is the beginning of it?
Here is what I know for sure: the closer each one of us gets to living our announcement, to healing the world in the way we were meant to be healing, the closer we get to the world we are meant to have (and the further and further away we get from the mirror and our critique of ourselves because when we are fully living our announcement, we don’t have time to be paralyzed).
I am ready to live my announcement. No more playing small. No more playing scared. No more denying my voice. Can you join me?
My announcement? It took me years (and your book Beautiful You) to realize it – Carpe Diem!
I don’t want to change everything in my life (and can’t anyway). But I can aim to live my life 100% consciously. When I’m playing with my daughter, I sometime have a to-do-list in mind – but I can choose to be plainly, for a while, with my daughter and not just next to her, playing, laughing, seing the world through her eyes (so amazing and rewarding!). When I’m working for our household, I enjoy the feeling of a clean room, or the scent of soap on fresh laundry. And when I’m working, I can do it with all my heart, serving the world through my job (a normal office job…). By being mentally where I’m supposed to be – in the here-and-now, I can fully enjoy life. And give the best of myself.
I LOVE it, Cecile. What a beautiful, powerful announcement and valuable witness. Just being present is so hard and so powerful. Thanks for that reminder!
Great Post Rosie! And, Cecile, good points – I wonder if you are aware of St. therese, the little flower, who lived her life of service by doing ordinary things with extraordinary love. So simple was her life and philosophy and yet, her basic belief that we glorify God by loving deeply and offering up each moment of the day and each simple task to HIS glory, earned her status as Doctor of the Church!
Brene Brown writes about how the Ordinary life (which face it, most of us will live) has lost value in our society and worse, has come to be regarded as a “worthless” life – when in reality, like Therese, we will reach our greatest heights by doing the ordinary with great love. The consequences of this loss of value in Ordinary is, as a society is that we are willing to go to some pretty extreme lengths to achieve extraordinary or to numb our perceived failures. So, Cecile, I join you, and Saint Therese, in celebrating our wonderful ordinary lives and in living in the moment, in perfection, giving each blessed moment of my day my whole heart in love!!!
Love these comments, Mary, and the story about St. Therese. There is absolutely no need for our announcements to be colossal, to be this thing that’s never been heard. THere is simply a need for us to speak our truth and to help our truth be lived real in the world, whatever it is, however “ordinary” it might feel. Because there is nothing, after all, ordinary about living. When you think about life- how you got here literally and figuratively- it is extraordinary and demands your celebration in it- by living real. SO energized for this day because of you, Mary and Cecile, thank you!
I’d never thought of it as an announcement, but the thing I say most and the message I most want to get across to people is, “You are loved.”
(Which starts with yourself and ends with the entirety of the universe. All is One and The One is Love.)
Oh, Alexis, I LOVE this. Yes, yes, yes. You are loved is one of my favorite announcements and I love how you capture it. In fact, my best friend when I was teaching high school and I used to always say to each other, “You are loved” because we loved that it was such an active expression of our affection for each other. That was 15 years ago and she recently started You are Loved Designs based on this premise of helping people understand that they are loved (she’s still teaching, too). http://www.youarelovedesigns.com These announcements are making me so, so happy!
Wow, I love that story, it is such a kindred spirit connection!
(And what a great product your friend has created!!!)