Everything Isn’t Awesome

At least not all the time…

Matthew Woodall

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Photo by Sean Boyd on Unsplash

In one of my daughter’s favorite movies, The Lego Movie, the song “Everything is Awesome” runs through the entire Lego community — an upbeat, catchy tune that insists that everything is, indeed, awesome.

Except it isn’t.

It’s not in the movie, and it definitely isn’t in life.

But you wouldn’t know it based on what shows up in all sorts of places.

Social Media and blogging websites (including this one) are besieged by a form of toxic positivity that insists you can only ever write about positive things. It’s not only toxic, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of life.

When we push the narrative that things always have to be good, we don’t leave space for the honesty of brokenness. When we ignore the brokenness that is a regular part of life, we ignore the needs that come along with that. We are all broken at different parts of our lives, and failing to acknowledge that means we miss some of the important parts of life.

When someone is broken, or feeling brokenness it is dishonest to say otherwise — and completely disregards their feelings.

When we do this, when we disregard the fact that they’re feeling broken, we limit how people are feeling because it makes us feel uncomfortable.

I’ve been broken.

I’ve sat with broken people.

It is ugly and uncomfortable for everyone involved, but it is such a necessary part of life.

Because it makes us feel uncomfortable, our immediate thought is “how can I fix this?” but that’s disingenuous and doesn’t provide the right level of authentic relationship to that moment. Mostly, it isn’t ours to fix. It’s something that can take time and care to fix — but mostly it isn’t ours to fix.

The best we can do is to sit and be immediately present with someone who is broken — to give them someone who isn’t going to fix them, but will sit with them in their brokenness.

Who will sit with them in the raw honesty that brokenness brings.

Who will just sit with them.

Everything isn’t awesome.

We shouldn’t pretend it is.

We shouldn’t demand only the good parts of people’s lives.

If we are to be truly and authentically present with people, then we need to sit with them and simply be present.

Everything isn’t awesome, at least not all of the time. We owe it to the people we care about to be authentic and to not be scared off when things aren’t awesome.

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