Thoughts on Being Green

This is surely an odd title. Though you would all be gravely confused, I’m sure, if I said in a bare and unadorned way exactly what I was going to tell you.

Over the last few years I have learned what really truly matters to me. 1) Honesty and integrity. 2) Living a life of authentic truth to who I was created to be. Having these particular commitments means I often find myself in the discomfort, friction, or sometimes even the pain of disconnection that comes from boldly declaring your differentiation from the group or another individual’s code of conduct.

And that’s generally the part that we as a society talk about—because it’s the part that our brains are evolutionarily developed to remember. Honestly, they try to tell us never to experience or do it again. As social creatures, we are bound to one another for survival. We are hardwired to avoid disconnection and loneliness at all costs, as it is detrimental to our very livelihood.

That said, that’s the part that sticks. The part that hurts. That’s the part we talk about the most.

The second part we talk about—less often—is something I’ve never really thought much about until recently.

Often, when I’m worn down and tired from the effort and the “resilience” I have to repeatedly put on to get back up and choose to be annoyingly, defiantly myself another day—despite all the extra effort that comes with swimming upstream—I get tired. And I secretly (sometimes not so secretly) wish to myself that I’d been blessed with a natural existence more closely seated toward the median or the norm.

How much easier it must be if your true-to-yourself rhythm was more closely matched to the flow of the stream.

That’s the thought. I think it must be nice. I fancy myself, for a few moments, some kind of martyr for being different.

But I had a different thought today.

You know that feeling? That feeling when some sort of choice or move you made gives you that crazy satisfying, perfect-for-you payoff? Or leads to becoming a trumpet call for others to do the same? You know those moments. The ones that happen, the fleeting reward, after you decide to follow up on your covenant to your truthful self.

I suppose if I were normal—if my flow went with the stream—I’d have so many fewer of those proud-of-myself moments. Those few moments when I am able to say, “Actually, I think I am brave. Look at what I did. That was brave.”

I guess the peace of going with the flow comes at the cost of not having those moments—not having that self-pride quite so much.

And I’m not saying this to denigrate anyone whose rhythm might be more closely matched with the flow. More so to say—they might get peace, but they may not need or even have moments that result in those deeply moving, prideful (in a good way) feelings about themselves.

And I wouldn’t trade those afterburns for anything.

Tomorrow, I start a new job.

This job only came my way after I made a decision that seemed, in many ways, countercultural to the way I was raised and to what I was being told was the right thing to do for me at the time.

And I’m so glad that I knew in my bones what was actually right for me, even though it felt so wrong and so uphill at the time.

I know this job won’t be perfect, but there are some things on paper that we can know and ask for. And in that regard these guys stole my checklist. In this new position, it’s almost like, for the first time ever, I’m not trading something for something else. I’m not trading good culture for less-than-great pay or good hours for a bad work environment or good pay for no teammates. No, this one had everything on my checklist in a way that’s making my complex PTSD-addled brain say, “Where’s the other shoe?”

Sometimes there is no other shoe. Sometimes little tired one - we get good things.

Sure, I know there will be people, humans, and clients, and this will not be a perfect, no-problems-ever experience, but I think I’ve found something.

I am cautiously optimistic. No, I am optimistic—because I actually don’t think you can be cautiously optimistic. As I’ve said before, that shit is daring as hell.

I am optimistic that my level of commitment to following through and betting on myself is finally paying dividends in a way that feels like it is bound to feed my personal and professional growth immensely.

So, when you find yourself the only green one in the room, as Elphaba so often did, don’t wish it away. Look for how the room can benefit from your color, your green because quite honestly, the truth is none of us are completely “go with the flow” or “fit the mold” every single time.

We all have eight million different facets and idiosyncrasies that are all different.

At some point, if you are, in fact, being true to who you are, you will find yourself in a room where you’re green.

You may also find yourself in a room where you’re green, and you realize the rest of the room has a different thought that might be worth jumping out a window to oppose.

Have pride in your less-than-conventional skin tone, and don’t be afraid of heights. Flying solo is flying free.