David Roche has performed in the Clinton White House, at PLAN Institute's annual Thinking Like a Movement retreat on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia and around the world. He is a natural teacher and natural story teller. Natural because he speaks about what has meaning to him and by extension to ourselves. His authenticity encourages us to speak about what we know i.e. what has heart and meaning. David is also an author (The Church of 80% Sincerity), inspirational keynote speaker, the subject of four documentaries and talented, comedic performer. Love at Second Sight performed with his wife Marlena Blavin, is a favourite in North American schools.
Here is his response to the question: What would you like to become more visible in 2011? You can also Download Becoming Visible - the complete collection of 58 essays including David's.
Your Own True Beauty
I want your own true beauty to be more visible to you, seen in bits and pieces and flashes until it is well established. Then I want you to flaunt it so it is visible to others.
Last spring I was learning video blogging on my laptopʼs webcam. I found myself looking at my own face and its disfigurement from 15 inches away. Full color. Hi def.
I did not recognize what I saw as human. I could only focus on one part at a time. Like in a Picasso painting, parts did not fit together. Crooked mouth, bulging left cheek, eye too large. (Nose in the middle, good—a familiar reference point.) Eye, spotted like a dogʼs eye. I had a vague sense of panic. I began to understand that what I saw was making a crude attempt to be a face. I was revolted and frightened. I did not know what was behind that apparition.
When I accepted that it was me, I flashed with hatred and anger that such a face was pretending to be human. Raw visceral rage, and stronger rage that it was my own face and that I lived inside it and I was the one who was pretending to be human.
I was repulsed by my own appearance.
My face had popped in its horrible reality into my consciousness like a jack in the box.
I closed the laptop and retreated inside my own stunned and silent self.
I am not used to looking at my own image. In the morning mirror I ignore the disfigurement. I look in my eyes and smile. I canʼt even tell you where the bulging purple veins are on my face except in the most general way.
When I did talk to my wife, Marlena, about what had happened, she said,
"Honey, you have built your soul inside yourself. That is what is real, that is who you are. You just slipped away from that for a few seconds. And you know what? You are strong enough to deal with what happened."
She was right. My sense of myself is creativity, empathy, imagination, all qualities on the inside.
I told a friend, a quite attractive woman, what I had experienced. She said, "Oh, I feel that way every morning."
Her statement surprised me, but as I talked more I found out that my reaction to myself was not that strange. The unusual aspect was that it was unusual because I do retain a strong sense of myself as a person of value, as someone who is attractive.
I had to make the effort to remember who I am and as I did my own value
became visible to me again.
Perhaps my story will encourage you to make that same effort. I promise that as you do, your own beauty will become more visible to you. And to the world.
NOTES:
Click here to access my previous post on David.
You can download the complete collection of Becoming Visible responses here: Download Becoming Visible. Or by clicking the Becoming Visible Category on the right hand side of your screen.
Please share and distribute to your friends and through your various networks, websites etc. I think you will agree – these are too good to keep to ourselves.
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