Collapsing Time, the Renaissance, and TikTok
Warning: Many a Renaissance reference
Today is Thursday, February 1st and I am (per usual) coming to you fresh out of a very inspirational conversation with a client. I have said it before, and will undoubtedly say it again, my clients are so insightful and intuitive. It is a gift to work with them. In this specific conversation, this client and I shared the same felt sense that times seems to be moving faster. I felt a gut punch in noticing that my desire to oversee this shared reality felt unavoidable. It feels like someone has pressed the fast-forward button on the universe and I scramble because “I don’t want to miss it!” Both my client and I felt the intuitive urge to weight ourselves around bodies of water. For me, a mountain river. For weeks now the screensaver on my phone has been a photo of me this summer visiting the Elk River, in Banner Elk, NC. *Takes incoming call* Hello Universe, I hear you.
This moment in Western culture feels very demanding and I find myself tardy to its requests. In the spirit of keeping up, I most recently began creating a presence on social media. Those of you who know know me know my discomfort in this. Outside of the walls of my close friendships, I prefer to be a social enigma. This isn’t because of a desire for privacy but because of a desire to minimize my vulnerability. There is something very bare about inviting the whole world to know know you. Fortunately, and unfortunately for me, I don’t have the desire or true ability to be anything but myself virtually or otherwise. So fully participating in social media feels very raw.
So, in the spirit of rawness and collapsing time, here is the story of me, the renaissance, and TikTok.
On our Honeymoon, my husband and I visited Michelangelo’s David. David is held in the Dome of the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze. Natural light pours over the sculpture providing warmth to an otherwise cold space. Guards positioned themselves around David, motioning for quiet, communicating that relic must be respected only by whispered admiration or quiet gaze. Our Florentine guide described the towering sculpture as “perfect.” When the David is put to scale, he is the true dimensions of a man of his time. She shared that Michelangelo was a perfectionist, frequently skewering his free-spirited counterpart, Leonardo DaVinci, for being unrefined. If his marble was not perfectly molded, Michelangelo would discard it in a fit of rage. If art was the language of self-expression during the renaissance, then I feel deeply sad for Michelangelo for seemingly spending his life in a cycle of perfectionism and shame.
Back in America, centuries later, I found myself in a similar, yet familiar, cycle of shame sitting in my den debating social media. “If social media is the language of self-expression during the 21st century,” I thought, “then I am no more secure than Michelangelo.” During my shame cycle, my DaVinci-like-husband casually rounded the corner suggesting, “maybe you are taking it too seriously?” His words were the Virgil to my Dante, pulling me through whatever dimension of hell I was lodged in. The next day, I met my social media team adopting the new perspective, it’s just not that serious.
Years ago, I learned that my perfectionism was sculpted by the years of seeking academic, relational, and self-validation for my humanness. Paradoxically, it quieted my humanness and made me a robot. This has a sneaky way of coming up again (and again…) . Here’s what I learned this time:
Perfectionism is a form of self-protection. If there is a part of you that is feeling like it must be the “best”, it is probably trying to protect you from the vulnerability that comes with allowing yourself to be known. Take care of that part, love that part.
Perfectionism may find you at the intersection of new experience and expectations. Manage your expectations for yourself. Where did those expectations come from? We are always learning.
On the spectrum of Michelangelo to DaVinci, I will probably never fully be the latter. I am okay with that because I am also not the former. There is a reality that I am working toward where the world slows down and I stand in the river of all of my unpredictable humanness. I have been there, I see it on my screensaver and I feel it in my soul. Thank you to collapsing time, Michelangelo, and TikTok for the invitation to be reminded.