I was not raised to be “so so”…

There was an explicit expectation that I put 110% into all that I did. My dad would tell me, “If the teacher wants a five page essay, you give them 10 pages.” Because that’s how he got through his life - putting himself through over a decade of night school community college to get his degree as the first in his family to graduate. That’s how he got me and my family to the place where we lived in an idyllic town in Connecticut that had one of the highest rated education districts in a house that was really the house of my parents’ dreams.

However, being “so so” was not part of our lifestyle. Every day, every week was scheduled and I was expected to be great. If I wasn’t great at something, I was expected to try harder next time to be great, to be excellent, to be higher achieving than the day before. I’m sure this sounds familiar to many people. “So so” was just not part of our vocabulary. “So so” was considered less than. “So so” was just unacceptable.

My family was not necessarily incredibly competitive. I was never on a sports team in my life. I didn’t feel a hugely competitive push or stressful energy. Rather, the expectations were clear and the bar was high and that colored everything I did. Honestly, I don’t know any other way. My involvement in the performing arts, school projects, other creative endeavors, church, or community groups was always about cultivating me as a person. These activities were joyful most of the time but they were also tinged with a “you’re doing this to get ahead” vibe - “you’re building your résumé.”

And, I mean, it worked!

I got into one of the most elite private boarding schools in New England for high school and from there went on to graduate with Honors in Comparative Literature from NYU and a Master’s Degree in English education from Columbia University’s Teachers College. So, thank you, PARENTS, for pushing me, and for raising the bar beyond my own perceived expectations of myself. I have taken this vision of myself with me and held on to the belief that I can really do anything. So, again, I’m grateful for that.

At the same time, I’ve come to realize that being “so so” is kinda nice sometimes. So this collective is all about grappling with my “so so” parts an inviting you to do the same. What parts of me can I allow to just be “so so” in order for me to really SO deeply understand how I am a variety of dimensions or a multitude of capacities or other qualities? I am so so many things, and this is about my journey of exploring and returning to many of the things that I was so “good at” in childhood, but felt that I needed to release and get rid of and ignore because I wasn’t perfect at them or excellent at them or graduating from college with a degree in them.

But being “so so” at something is sometimes very joyful. Being “so so” at something is sometimes really what it’s all about. Being “so so” at something is what brings communities together and allows people to take a learning stance, to grow, to learn from each other, and to learn about themselves. In a collective we can relate to one another to find what it means to be happy in this life and maybe what it means we get to enjoy trying, being curious, and failing. It’s not about being good or being bad. There’s always a little bit of both. When you embrace being “so so”, sometimes you get “Wow, that felt great! I did that really well!” and sometimes it’s “Oops! What happened there?” It’s THAT - that balance of being “so so” - in between excellence and trying in between the zone of flow and challenge, in between achievement and obstacles, in between smooth sailing and stormy seas. That’s what this is all about so I’m inviting myself to be a little bit more “so so” every day and inviting you all to check out what parts of you are just “so so” so that we can all work on becoming so joyful, so whole, or so filled with whatever it is we want in our lives.