Whenever we raise our voices as survivors of many human conditions, we declare that we are both vulnerable and assertive, and this is may be why we are often considered outlandish, dramatic, hyper-creative, or broadcasting abrasively. The simple existence of artists who are willing to submit both competence, confidence, and adamance, alongside articulation, acknowledgment, or acceptance of all the various kinds of human trauma, are seen sometimes as courageous and strong, but too frequently as broken and shouting, damaged past social norms, or just plain crazy. How dare we live and create with bravado in a world where most humans expect other humans to only reveal their strengths and successes? Bury the factors that have made us so capable. Deny in bios what we fear to even fictionalize or capture in poetry or paintings.
Writers, illustrators, artists, academics, and professionals of all kinds are expected to check the yucky, messy, injured portions of being human at the door of work, school, polite gatherings, and publication. It almost never works, even when we agree. The omnipresent struggle of humanity doesn’t then just disappear. We have all seen the many famous quotes about each of our species containing raging battles on the inside, that are not revealed in each and every moment of every interaction we have. We carry our own raw, tender places within each of us, suspecting that all others nurse these as well. Each next time a human grimaces, gives pause, or has a tight smile when they report to us that that they are, “Ok, you?” we gnaw over whether or not we should pry deeper to check it out, if we could handle the nuances of their truth that day, that moment. We know that everyone, in all aspects of our lives, have had triumphs, heartbreaks, and mediocre muddles of full of subtlety. Why can we just let both be, all of the time? Why doesn’t our greeting of each other in every space simply nod to a current balancing point between tentative oblivion and solid bliss? We know we all have both.
Here, we want to acknowledge that everyone is this see-saw, teeter-totter, inherited and created blend of primate existence. We are allowed to sit in the elemental, experiential, animal existence of organized syntax and pure, instinctual blazing. We can discuss both. We can write both. We can draw both. We can research both. We can protect both. We are already both.
Those who can balance and share elemental pain and joy through genuine expression, harness them together for mutual exploration, shall inherit the starlight of our span in this universe. And it make for really great reading, by whole, wonderful human beings; for whole, amazing human beings.