The red-haired yoga teacher with the Indian accent did catch my attention with one thing he said: “Those of you who are really bad at yoga, you’re in the right place. I hope everyone will allow themselves to be really crappy today, to walk away from being perfect. The real yoga isn’t in the perfect pose; it’s in the crappy pose that you are really feeling. You want to feel it from the inside out, rather than make it perfect from the outside in.”
[…] I had a sudden thought: What if the opposite of good wasn’t bad? What if the opposite of good was real?
-Claire Dederer, Poser
While I enjoyed the whole book, this line from Dederer’s memoir about yoga, motherhood, writing, marriage and coming to terms with your childhood hit me squarely in the chest.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to be good – e.g., to be cheerful, helpful, smart, kind, easygoing, capable, stylish, put together, nice. There are a number of reasons for this: I am an oldest child; I am a woman; I was labeled a bookworm/smart kid almost from the time I could read; I was raised (happily) in a conservative Christian home; I am a people pleaser. Perhaps most critically, these are the attributes that translated as “good” in my family and church and social milieu. Some of them, obviously, come more naturally than others. And trying to maintain them all is exhausting.
Lately, trying to be good has looked more like trying to be efficient, cheerful (that one is annoyingly persistent), productive (at work and at home), helpful (also persistent), non-needy, nice. This set of attributes, while a little shorter, is also exhausting.
For much of my life I have equated being good with being nice – perhaps because so many of the truly good folks I know are also truly nice and kind; perhaps because “Be nice” was a phrase frequently heard in our home. But lately I’ve come to believe that always being good and/or being nice can sometimes put up barriers to being seen. You can’t really get to know someone if they skim over the surface of everything, or hide behind false cheer or politeness. And aren’t we all more interesting when we’re messy than when we’re polite?
Not surprisingly, this carries over into my writing, which is far sharper and juicier and more vivid (like a good steak) when I let myself be messy and real than when I stay polite and nice. Of course, there are boundaries, and I sincerely never intend (in writing and life) to cause anyone pain. But I love the idea of throwing off the proper, tailored, suffocating mantle of goodness, and exchanging it for a wildly patterned, beautifully imperfect life of realness.
How do you deal with the good/real divide – or is it a divide in your life?
cakes, tea and dreams 
It’s like living life in shades of grey or seeing life as black or white.. I guess, the shades of grey are real.
I think I definitely need to read this book.