Gemstones: Bigger, Better, and Uncut
My friend Bre and I were talking about some hoopla kerfluffle I sparked on Twitter some time ago. I made an inflammatory generalization and wound up offending and upsetting some people, which in turn upset me because I felt unheard and misunderstood.
Bre summed up the situation beautifully, and I felt it was so awesome, it deserved the light of the internets.
With gemstones we take a stone and look at its properties. Then we cut bits off of it and shine it up and grade it based on color, and quality, and the kinds of imperfections it has and where, and some imperfections are good and some aren’t, and some are intended and some aren’t, and we categorize how “good” they are based on this whole process – when really, it’s just a stone that we took and then augmented its natural state to look a particular way so we can judge it better.
(We do this with each other, too.)
You, Kyeli, like all the shiny bits and corners and angles and imperfections and good stuff and color that happens naturally. Sometimes, this means everyone else shows up to the party with their cut gems, and you show up with a wild gem, and everyone gets confused because we try to judge yours based on the standards for the cut gems, and it gets confusing.
But there isn’t anything wrong with yours at all, because it’s got all of the exact same qualities; it just didn’t go through a bunch of arbitrary rules to make it stand up to a particular standard. The issue isn’t that it’s less, or less beautiful. That isn’t what people are confused or upset about; it’s that there’s no way to say which wild gem is better than another wild gem. There are no rules for that.
And Bre is totally right.
The lack of rules makes people uncomfortable. Encountering someone uncensored, someone who shows up with wild gems, tends to push at the boundaries we set up for how we interact with each other.
This is what we’re all about here. Being our own gorgeous, wild, shiny, uncut gemstones who may not fit into what society expects of us; that’s the Freak Revolution.
So bring it on; bring us your lopsided, kooky, unpolished selves. Bring us your open, honest, covered-with-dirt, uncensored selves, and let’s get connected. Because who says the current rules are the right ones, anyway?
Feel clear and confident about your direction in life!
Do you wish you could follow your heart, but it seems impossible? I can help you find the clarity and courage you need.
In other words, I can help you find your path.