Embrace the suck?

The slippery slope of skills becoming an identity...

Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash

It wasn’t the jacked-to-Jesus diesel Ram 4x4 that caught my eye so much as the slogan emblazoned across the back window:

EMBRACE THE SUCK!

I can laugh about it now. The way one might about an old, hideous scar. 

Because if EMBRACE THE SUCK! was a competitive sport, I’d have been Gretzky, Jordan and Brady all rolled into one.

Through my football, competitive sport, and military career, shouldering the load was my calling card.

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap? Fuck yeah. Sign me up.

But a funny thing happened one day on the way to the ol’ suck factory: I fumbled my way into prosperity. Easy street. The good life.

And you’d have thought I’d be joyous, yeah? Throttle the afterburners, cool the jets?

Nope. Not so.

Why? Because my very IDENTITY was now in the crosshairs.

So I did what people do when their identities are threatened. I doubled down on what made me, ME.

I couldn’t find suck in my environment, so I CREATED suck — A LOT of it.

In very creative, yet totally unconscious ways. And lemme tell you - I can be VERY creative.

I became Captain Chaos. The Inspiration for the Mayhem guy in the ALL-State commercials. Val Kilmer’s Joker? Yeah, I know the role.

ANYTHING to maintain my EMBRACE THE SUCK! identity.

But here’s what I learned - the hard way: the warrior in the garden is skilled at the art of war. Yet he does all possible to AVOID conflict.

He just IS… with a toolbelt of integrated skills. Gardening and war (peace and chaos) are but two of the many.

Now integrating an identity into a whole & complete human psyche might be one of the most excruciating things you’ll ever do.

I know because I’ve done it. More than once.

I’m doing it NOW, in fact.

And this I know: identities are limitations preventing us from realizing our true genius.

What identities are YOU clinging to? What genius is being denied?

Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

Peace,
Keith