If imperfections cohabitate with perfections
Before you meet some people, you meet their souls. I know, it is crazy, but I felt this yesterday. My soul was jumping, and I was giddy, and we had never even met. Soul. It is a lot. I would really love if someone met my soul before me. It is a pull. When you experience someone’s soul, you meet their reality. Who they really her and if it pulls at you, they are wholesome.
When the year started, I had told everyone my new year resolution was to be naked. Everyone had gone “What?”. I was not sure what it meant either but yesterday, I saw an aspect to it I never considered. I wanted to be naked with God at the beginning of the year but now? I want to be naked with the world. I want to bare my soul. I want to be light. Not only in the biblical context, but that people feel airy around me.
I want my chaos to cohabitate with my stillness. For a long time, I have chased after stillness, rather than jump and have fun in chaos. I keep waiting by a corner till all is calm again, but every little time counts, and we never know when our time will be up, so why reserve our joy for few moments of stillness when we can have them every second? It is more memorable. I want to wear my heart on my sleeves. I want my smiles to be lasting effects. I want to live wild, free and crazy. I want to have the batiste pull!
I had laid on my bed, naked last night watching architectural digest and stumbled on the episode of Jon batiste and Suleika Jaouad. What was supposed to be a chill show of me criticizing other people’s design choices ended up being a thought-provoking episode. It was the way he laughed, grooved, played and constantly held on to her. It was the grammy award in the bathroom! It was the melodica. He had something I wanted. Soul!
This has had me checking out his music, jumping off my chair and dancing and just thinking ‘How do you have this much soul yet not be heavy?’ You could feel how happy he was, yet genius. You could feel how different he was. In the episode, they had said “We celebrate imperfections in our home”. That has sat over me like a cloud all day. That takes nakedness. That takes bringing parts of yourself you would rather hide and placing them on the table for display.
I call this the batiste pull. It’s unexplainable but when you feel it, it does not leave you. You feel free, you catch the happiness. Last year, I wrote the things I felt but in form of storytelling and I hid behind these characters I wrote about. They were me. Every single one of them were feelings I had felt but was too ashamed to declare. Now, this year, we write naked. You will meet me. Imperfect me. On my birthday, I got the sweetest messages, and everyone kept saying how cheerful I always am. That is growth from who I was two years ago, but I want nakedness. I want others to say that when they met me, they met soul. They had a batiste pull. I want to celebrate my imperfections in chaos with a smile on my face and dancing to my feet. I want depth but really light depth.
“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
— C.S. Lewis
