On Expression, Awkwardness, and Letting Life Shape Us
We are different human recipes, and each day is a unique concoction.
Some days we feel open, outgoing and expressive. Other days we feel contracted, still and silent. We move through phases and cycles, often without warning, often without explanation. One day we’re expansive and available, the next we’re inward and cocooned, conserving something we don’t yet have words for.
None of this is random. None of it is wrong. And yet, it’s easy to believe there’s a correct way to be human, a correct level of expression we should all be aiming for.
The Pressure to Perform Expression
There isn’t necessarily a common “right” amount of vulnerable expression that each must aim for in order to feel like, or be, a fully expressed human.
Sometimes social trends and subtle pressures say otherwise. They reward visibility, openness and constant articulation. They can make it feel like being quiet means being avoidant, or being inward means you’re behind.
But expressions that come from pressure often carry the energy of “should.” And expressions that come from “should” rarely feel nourishing.
This is vastly different from the urge to connect in the raw – to share because something is ready to be birthed.
Quiet Is Still an Expression
All of our phases and moments are an expression of some kind, even if they look quiet and cocooned.
In our more dark, introverted, cavernous moments, there is so much brewing under the surface. There are reorganizations happening that don’t benefit from commentary. There are insights forming that don’t yet want language.
I like to think of it as the awkward phase. The in-between. The part of the process that doesn’t photograph well.
The phase where you’re clearly morphing – yet somehow it’s too early for a coherent shape to be revealed. Too late to go back, and you still can’t see the end of the tunnel.
The Brewing Beneath the Surface
What’s forming beneath the surface will inevitably come out as some kind of discovery when the time is right. When the system has finished its quiet work.
There’s a natural intelligence to this timing. A sense of rhythm that can’t be rushed without distortion. When we interrupt it with pressure, we often delay the very thing we’re waiting for.
This phase asks for patience and trust. And a willingness to let things be unfinished for a while.
Letting the Phases Shape You
What happens if you take any pressures off, no matter what phase and cycle you are in?
The open phases. The expressive phases. The awkward, withdrawn, interior ones. They all belong, and none of them need justification.
There is such a beauty in letting yourself be where you are without trying to narrate it into something more palatable. Without trying to name or label it.
Moving Like the Cosmos
There’s a quote I love:
“Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space. But only the dance lives at once in both space and time. In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participates completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the mechanics of the cosmos.” — Lyall Watson
It feels comforting to remember that life moves more like a dance than a checklist. Sometimes expansive, sometimes contained, sometimes awkward – but always intelligent.
If things feel unfinished right now, you’re likely not off track. You’re likely mid-movement. Let it be imperfect. Let it take the time it needs.
Every phase deserves trust. Let it have its moment to shape and sculpt you anew.
Loving you always!
Meghan