The Courage To Be Grumpy

Know Yourself: Welcoming your very worst traits

Photo by Niranjan _ Photographs on Unsplash with gratitude

My friend recommended a writer on Substack who was ‘often grouchy’ and also ‘deeply feeling and poetic’. It turned out that I had already connected with this writer and liked his writing so much that I had become a paid subscriber. Chris La Tray describes himself as a ‘crabby middle-aged Native guy’ and, as he says on his bio page, he has excellent reasons for being crabby, being a member of an indigenous tribe in North America who were landless for more than 150 years. I love him & his writing and I am happy that we have since become Substack-friends - do go check him out.

What piques the interest of my people-pleasing parts is that Chris’s crabbiness isn’t something I ‘put up with’ to get to the ‘good stuff’, but an integral part of what I appreciate about him and his work. This seems very strange to my people-pleasers, as their whole job is to keep my crabbiness, and anything else that other people might object to, out of sight.

Since starting ‘Going Gently’ in January I have been curious about what kind of writing I want to do here or, more accurately, who I want to be. This can get very tangled with two other questions: Who do you want me to be? And, how can I get more people to read my writing and subscribe?

These two questions are good ones, and they have their place, but I absolutely do not want to give them a front seat. The whole point of my writing practice is for me to write myself towards the truth. This includes the truth of who I am (sometimes crabby, jealous, greedy & selfish) and what the world is (sometimes cruel, complicated & overwhelming).

I trust that when I sink deeply into the truth, however unappealing or scary or mucky, that I will eventually reach a bedrock of Good. That our very worst traits and the things we are most afraid of are, as Rilke so beautifully put it, “…something helpless that wants our love.”

I have parts that want you to like me and that prioritise this above all else. They will probably always travel with me - sometimes acting as censor, sometimes making extra efforts to be useful or clever or flattering. I also have parts that are busy plotting about how to build my growing gang of lovely paid subscribers, including my internal capitalist Eddie.

Luckily, there is something much bigger inside me that is motivated by love, and I make sure that this is what’s in charge. Love wants me to be always moving toward the truth. Love wants you to see me as I am, with my growing tummy and financial catastrophes and people pleasing parts, and trusts that if you then reject me, that’s okay. Love knows that even when it’s not okay, it's okay.

I was going to end this piece by telling you something I felt crabby about, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. I have very strong internal messages about the unacceptability of anger.

I'm sending this newsletter from our holiday cottage in rural Shropshire, early in the morning, accompanied by a chorus of crows, cheeping sparrows and sheep. The dew is silvery on the fields and I have a dog on my lap.

The hills are gazing at me as the sun floats upwards. They can see my busy brain. They are whispering something - I can't quite hear it… Ah. Yes. ‘Shhhhhh.’

Go gently,
Satya <3

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Questions to ponder: What questions get tangled with your attempts at being true to yourself and others? What fears are behind these questions?

What parts of yourself are difficult to love? How might you find ways of listening to them or even expressing them?

What helps you to connect with the Big Love inside you/outside of you that just wants you to be yourself?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…

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This is part of my Definitive Guide to Going Gently series.