September 24th, 2010
It is Friday. And on Fridays I try to promote and celebrate the flying of the Freak Flag. The Freak Flag represents a lot of things. Here are a few…
It is the celebration of coloring outside the lines.
It is for wearing socks that say something.
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. On Mondays.
It is the celebration of taking naps and of eating dessert first.
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 are and sharing who you are, and STILL loving who you are.
It is the celebration of your gift and of you sharing your gift…the one that only you have to share.
It is the celebration of good poetry and bad poetry, as long as it is real poetry.
It is the celebration of love. Not the advertised kind, or the in the movies kind, but the action kind. Not the convenient kind, but the courageous kind. The kind of love that liberates, that generates, the kind that shares power. The Gandhi kind of love. The Jesus kind of love. Those folks loved fiercely.
It is the celebration of caring.
It is the celebration of the yin and of the yang and of the magic where they meet and dance together.
It is the celebration of safe space.
It is the celebration of taking up our fair share of space.
It is the celebration of sharing 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 powerpoint presentation. The kind that cannot be found without getting lost. Get lost…that is where the good stuff is found.
It is the celebration of silence, curiosity and inquiry. It is the celebration of big questions rather than little answers.
It is the celebration of difference. It is the celebration of the other. It is the celebration of the other that can be found within us and within the other and between us both. There is so much between us. Everything is between us.
It is the celebration of resistance and redemption. It is the celebration of truth and of truth telling. It is the celebration of self-determination and liberation.
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, or the normal, or of the popular, or of the lowest common denominator.
It is the celebration of the writer, the painter and the candlestick maker that all share the essence of who they are in their work.
It is the celebration of living with eyes wide open.
It is the celebration of singing your song, the one that only you can sing.
It is the celebration of reading in a cornfield.
It is the celebration of the praxis.
It is the celebration of being proud citizens of Neptune.
It is the celebration of being awake and alive and paying attention to that which matters. It is the celebration of being uncertain and uncomfortable.
It is the celebration of being good to ourselves.
It is the celebration of being good to and for each other.
Fly it, you big freak.
Wow. I love it. I let my freak flag fly most days. But I so wish this was encouraged in more workplaces. People would be a lot happier and a lot more productive.