July 8th, 2009
I try to celebrate the Freak Flag on Fridays, and it recently occurred to me that maybe someone could design an actual flag…and then it occurred to me that maybe others could share quotes, stories, drawings, pictures, etc. that I could post on Fridays. As I have made more noise about Freak Flag Friday and getting contributions from others, people have started asking me what exactly it means.
Funny thing.
Having to sit down and articulate what it means, I realized that it means a lot of things. Here are a few…
It is the celebration of coloring outside the lines.
It is the celebration of chair dancing, because you cannot help it and chalk on the sidewalks and food on the wall and of skipping and blowing bubbles…during work hours.
It is the celebration of naps.
It is the celebration of leaving your original, completely unique, one of a kind, never before and never again imprint on the universe.
It is the celebration of knowing who you are and loving who you and sharing who you are, and STILL loving who you are.
It is the celebration of good poetry and bad poetry, as long as it is real poetry and eating when you are hungry and sleeping when you are tired.
It is the celebration of love. Not the advertised kind, but the action kind. Not the convenient kind, but the courageous kind. The kind of love that leads to injury and jail and death. The Gandhi kind of love. The Jesus kind of love. Those dudes loved, and they paid for it.
It is the celebration of caring.
It is the celebration of yin and of yang.
It is the celebration of safe space.
It is the celebration of authenticity. Not the kind that people write business books about or build consulting careers on, but the real kind. Get it…“real authenticity?” The kind that you cannot get from a fancy powerpoint presentation. The kind that cannot be found without getting lost.
It is the celebration of silence, curiosity and inquiry.
It is the celebration of difference. It is the celebration of the other. It is the celebration of resistance. It is the celebration of truth.
It is the celebration of the freak. We are all freaks…if we tell the truth.
It is the celebration of you. It is the celebration of me. It is not the celebration of the average, the mean, or of popular opinion. It is the celebration of those of that will not swim in the mainstream.
It is the celebration of the writer, the painter and the candlestick maker that all share themselves when they work.
It is the celebration of reading in a cornfield.
It is the celebration of the praxis.
It is the celebration of being from Neptune.
It is the celebration of being awake and alive and paying attention to that which matters.
It is the celebration of being good to and for each other.
So.
That is a bit of insight on what FFF means to me. Having said that, I would love to feature a drawing, painting, word, joke, story, quote or anything else that speaks to what FFF might mean for you.
joe.gerstandt |@| gmail.com
-be good to each other