Just Say Yes

To say that I lacked confidence when I was younger would be like saying that Wilt the Stilt was of above-average height. It would be like saying that Will Smith is a fairly talented young man. The Mona Lisa isn't a bad painting. Mos Def is okay-looking. Louis Armstrong was moderately musically inclined. My cat is slightly vocal. Colnago makes a decent bicycle.

You get the picture.

Anyway, it occurs to me that there's a link between confidence and optimism. The other day (that would be yesterday - time is seeming to fly, fly, fly, like the landscape past a pair of long bronze legs) I was out to dinner with a whole batch of people who are relatively new in my personal orbit, and I had a marvelous time.

Now, partly (mostly) that is because they are very friendly, interesting, welcoming types. But it's also due to the fact that I let myself say yes when one of them invited me, instead of shyly backing off from intruding. When friends who are new invite me to do something with them, I always have a dual reaction: pleased to be invited and worried that I ought to say no.

It's a risk, saying yes. It's a risk that I'll feel like a third (or 7th, in this case) wheel. It's a risk that I'll find myself back in seventh grade, the new kid in town, cast off to the outer reaches of society. (Yeah, it's totally melodramatic, but that is how one feels at that age.)

Now that I've acquired a little practice in saying yes, I can't help but feel that I wasted so many opportunities to have fun, and to feel included, and to party like a rockstar. Okay, maybe not like a rockstar, but you know what I mean. These people are fun, and nice, and everybody's different, and there's room there (it seems) for me, too. And it's all been a huge, and very welcome, lesson for me.

I've been learning that - once you get beyond actual middle school - nearly all of my limits are ones I place on myself. I mean, apart from gravity, and even that one has a little fudge-room...

I'll tell you the core of it, laid down in raw red emotional brick long ago. It's an assumption that people won't get me. They won't see who I am.

Guess what? That turns out to be bullshit. I mean, of course, I am not going to be everybody's cup of tea - nobody is. But among the funky oddballs of the world, there's plenty of room for my own oddness, and there are a surprisingly large number of people who look at (or more importantly, talk to) me, and go, "Oh, cool."

Doesn't mean everybody will get every bit, and I know I don't get every bit of everybody else, either. But there's so much more room for intersection than I realized. It reminds me of listening to the layers in music - all those different threads of sound interacting, intersecting, weaving back and forth in and around each other - not losing their individuality, but together making something lively and glorious and interesting. Yeah. Like that.

And if you're wondering about this array of goodies on that lovely lavender tissue paper, it's from Shan. Shan whom I've never met in person, and who gets me nonetheless. See what I'm sayin'?

PS. The Nikon has not nearly done justice to that yarn, which is Rio de la Plata, a handspun, hand-dyed wool from Uruguay. The color's called Faded Lyons Blue, but there's nothing faded about it. It's a vibrant tealish blue - pretty much my favorite color on earth. Okay, one of them. Feels great, too. Mmmmmm.

PS2. Verbatim from the enclosed note: "I hope you like what I made for you [the amazing origami beads, which I'd coveted from the moment she posted pics of them], which I had always intended for you even though I tried to throw you off the scent by claiming it had gone to some other "friend"... Totally faked out, dear. Thanks!