How to Be a Messy Human

Maybe ideological purity is just that: ideological.

One night last week, I clicked the Substack avatar of a writer I follow. It expanded to fill my screen and rolled immediately into a video—a class of, essentially, “How to be a Good Substack Writer.” I was eating chocolate on the sofa at 11pm, so I just let it play.

The course had one takeaway: Have a clear, consistent persona on Substack. Figure out who you are, what you want to say, and (literally) fill in that blank, day after day after day. Readers want to know what to expect.

I’m a good student, so I’m going to do the assignment.

Hi, Substack! I’m a writer without a book, a teacher without a full-time teaching job, a mother who not infrequently hides from her kids, a dog-lover who has chucked a shoe at my dog’s head. I’m an environmentalist who is on a first-name basis with the Amazon drivers, a health-food-nut with a whole pantry shelf of extra cheesy Cheez-its, a simplicity advocate who lives in a house practically exploding with unnecessary things. I am a feminist who loves being a semi-stay-at-home mother to four kids, an artist who fritters all her creative energy painting the kitchen backsplash, an academic who scribbles huh?? in the margins of all her big fat books. I’m a nature-lover who, on any given day, would rather cozy into my butt-shaped sofa indentation than go for a walk. I’m a runner who hasn’t run a mile since April. I’m a tender empath whose favorite mode of communication is scathing, hot-knife sarcasm. I’m an intensely private and image-oriented person who will spill all my guts to you in one second flat. I’m a throbbing heart full of hope who has made close friends with despair, a believer who is mired in doubt.

Oh.

Is that... not, you think, what they meant?

In the branding age, we’ve all becoming self-labeling wizards. It’s the little bios we thumb-type in sans serif on our social accounts: Entrepreneur. Life Coach. Writer. Sometimes we even substitute emojis (did you know the 💍 means “Wife” and 👦👦👦 means “Boy Mom”?). We’re all just filling in the blanks, doing as we’re told.

But if we’re honest, aren’t we all a little... complicated? Even a bit contradictory, perhaps?

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In my early thirties, after some psychological/spiritual shake-ups, I believed I was moving toward a clearer, simpler version of myself. The growth trajectory, I assumed, was from confusion to clarity.

Here’s one example. I read books and learned climate science and, as a result, was converted from total environmental apathy to a deep understanding that I was using more than my fair share of the earth’s resources. You might say I became a Tree Hugger.

What I thought would happen was that my new appreciation for sustainability would override every lazy impulse, bad habit, and selfish desire I’d ever had. I wanted to be the environmental advocate who not only scorned plastic water bottles but stopped buying them, forever.

But there they were in my grocery cart!! Just this one time, because a lot of people are coming over! Wait, there they are again! Because the kids can’t reach the water faucet! Wait, ten years have passed and I’m still buying crate after crate of disposable bottled waters, never mind that I feel guilt every. single. time?!?

If I were to put 🌳 + 🫂 in my Instagram bio, it wouldn’t be a lie. The Overstory made me cry about trees!! I stopped using disposable straws! I research which plant species will help the bees and then plant them in my yard!!

But what if you walked in my house and saw an entire mini-fridge full of bottled waters? Would you think I’m an imposter?

Would I be? Am I?

When “everything changed” for me, I wanted everything to change—for the old parts of me vanish, making room for new convictions, new habits, new and better ways of being in the world. At every turn I have wanted to leave behind who I used to be and inhabit a whole new, uncomplicated kind of person. A person with pure motives and direction. The kind of person who could be encapsulated by all the best, cleanest labels.

I waited and waited for the transformation to be complete.

And waited.

What happened—instead of a clean transformation—was that my new values muddled with my old values. I started loving kale but never kicked my taste for double stuf Golden Oreos.

Three cheers for trans fats!

This is the whole metaphor. The contradictions haven’t lessened as I’ve grown older; they’ve only multiplied. Old habits die hard... or never die at all.

Maybe ideological purity is just that: ideological. Maybe, in real life, we are never going to live up to our own ideals.

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I have this actual magnet on my fridge.

get one

I am, at forty, realizing this is the new way of things. I will only add identities, and all the people I’ve been before will still leave their residue. The trajectory is not from clarity to confusion—but just the opposite: from (a sort of pseudo-)clarity to complexity.

I once read a quote that impacted me so profoundly, I made it the epigraph for a book manuscript I worked on for five years. I have now read it hundreds and hundreds of times, always on that first typed page. A man named John Kavanaugh traveled to Calcutta to seek advice from Mother Teresa. She asked him what she should pray for.

He begged her, “Clarity. Pray that I have clarity.”

Mother Teresa shook her head. “No, I will not pray that you find clarity,” she said. “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”

Oof.

My closest church leader told me the following words when I was a teenager: “God is a God of clarity.” I remember where I was sitting when she said it. She promised me that, whatever I was supposed to do, I would know it absolutely. I wrapped my arms around those words so tight they couldn’t breathe, not for many years. (Neither, I guess, could I.)

What a crazy thing to say an adolescent girl. My life proceeded to become a series of never-ever knowing what to do. Moral equations I couldn’t solve even with a highlighter, a sharpened pencil, and the world’s highest stack of Bibles.

It took me a long time to stop trying to solve the problem, to stop waiting on that solid self (one who could be neatly emoji-d in a bio) to come walking back through my front door. It took me a long time to realize I was going to be a little bit confused forever.

I think this confusion might be, if we’re honest, the one thing we all have in common. The human condition is just WILD. And we all have our packages of explanation, the doctrines and ideologies that seem to make it all make sense. We need—like, on a survival level—to believe we got the right package. Because, if not, well. [insert existential terror]

Sometimes, of course, nagging confusion makes people louder about their supposed certainty.

At the heart of so many of those teachings, though, is the idea that we can’t fully know. It’s the first thing we like to shove aside when we’re handed one of these packages. I heard that idea—that we can’t fully know, that we “see through a glass darkly”—a bajillion times growing up, and I chose to believe it was a reference to whether there would be ice cream and ponies in heaven.

Will God have a beard?

Well, silly, we just can’t fully know!

Every day I fake certainty. I know what people want from me, and it’s definitely not a shrug.

We elect the people we elect and follow the people we follow because no one likes a shrugger. We crave certainty in our leaders because we crave it in our lives. Just point the way, dear God, please.

Truth is, if you could turn me into a symbol, it might be like one of those signposts with a hundred arrows pointing in different directions.

Or ⁉️⁉️ ?

Or maybe 😵‍💫??

My entire life is based on a mighty tension between who I am and who I wish I were. Between Two Things is the only place I say that out loud.

We’re all told to be ashamed of our contradictions. We’re all supposed to be aiming for ideological purity.

Come to find out, there is tension at the heart of every meaningful teaching I’ve ever encountered. Tension, mostly, between the world we have and the one we want. Tension, too, between the already and the not-yet.

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Alright, so back to that Substack class. It did make me think about what I’m doing here at Between Two Things.

I may not be able to write a pithy bio, but I can sum up why I write here in just six words.

I want to give people permission.

Permission to do all kinds of things. To ask questions. To wonder. To not know anything. To be so confused. To be a mess. To change. To unbelieve things they once believed, to believe things they once thought were nonsense. To be too human to be emoji-d.

We could all give each other permission, you know. It could be really great.

Want to?