Sucking is an act of creativity

That’s today’s tea

“This feeling of wrongness is the one they have to learn as being correct”

Keith Johnstone uttered this statement in his book, ‘Impro.’

The book is his form of commentary on his experiences in improvisational theater (what he’s famous for pioneering), and in this context he was talking about trying to get budding actors to act in ways that are vastly different from their day-to-day styles of living. Of course, the actors who tried this met resistance; the feeling of wrongness that comes from trying to adopt an attitude that isn’t your default, or that you don’t have experience with, and to that, Keith responded with the statement quoted above.

I don’t know how or why, but the thought came to me that “sucking” -aka; messing up at something- is an act of creativity, and that Keith Johnstone was on to something with the statement quoted at the beginning of this article.

The human body is an information processing machine. It is rumored that your senses process about 11 million bits of information every second, and filters all of it, on a moment to moment basis, to create the world as you experience it. However, because of differences in things like habit, environment, background, genetic inclinations, and emotional/hormonal fluctuations, the manner in, and speed with, which different people process new information is different. That said, every human being is a bundle of highly complex and precise biological intelligence designed to process and assimilate information. And the crazy thing is that this intelligence assimilates new information by “sucking.” Lol.

It’s common sense when you think about it though, I mean, look at newborn babies, they suck at everything; the little tots can’t even hold their heads up; so pathetic. Yet, within a year, they’re running up and down, causing havoc and burbling streams of partially coherent language. Why? Because the human body is a learning machine, but it can only learn by sucking, which we all agree that babies do a lot of. Ignoring babies, reflecting on our lives and the various ventures we’ve undertaken as well, holds all the evidence we need to see that sucking is an important part of living and learning; you must suck and feel like an embarrassment, in a lot of cases, if you are to ever progress.

We all know this at some level, seeing as we’ve experienced it many times over. So, why then, are we still averse to sucking? Even with all “the failure is learning” platitudes that have been flying around in increasing volume since 2016, why do we still let aversions to fear, embarrassment and Ls keep us from doing things that intrigue us?

I guess the reasons vary, but I suspect that they are all versions of the outcome-oriented conditioning and ‘outsourcing of self-esteem’ that our current society induces in its individuals from birth. I spoke about this in my previous article, you can check it out if you want to better understand what I mean.

Being outcome-oriented is fine, really; life has its practical aspects. You have to be able to navigate your way through the world and have a certain level of safety, if you’re to be able to comfortably suck at the things you want to experiment with. However, I think we overdo it. I think somewhere along the line, we started to cling to tightly to our ideas of what the good life is, and that that has narrowed humanity. It has kept the spectrum of possibility for our species very small, and made us highly dependent on external factors, even for things as basic as the desire to want to be alive. We, who are guaranteed nothing, not even our next breath (theoretically speaking), somehow began to think that we must be able to design life as we see fit. And while, some progress has come from that -life is also about dominating your environment as completely as you possibly can- we seem to forget that this is only possible within certain spheres and to only certain extents, and is not without its consequences, and is of course not guaranteed. Anyways, I digress.

Back to topic; the only things we have in life are our choices. Those are the only things we can truly say we have some sort of claim on; even though we still have to undo years of conditioning and engage in a lot of inner work to fully utilize this ability, lol, smh.

We don’t decide our genetic heritage, we don’t decide what potentials we’re born with, we don’t choose our families, and we definitely cannot choose how people will respond to the things we do. We can however, choose to attempt the things we want, and attempt them at our own pace, for good or for ill, and it is important to remember that we will suck at various parts, and points, as we go about these ventures. The degrees of suck will vary of course, but we can’t escape that if we’re to really explore the entirety of our human experience, we must shame ourselves, and probably our entire generation, in public, at one point or the other.

No need to fret though, that’s just how it goes. The feelings of wrongness, awkwardness, anxiety, cringe and embarrassment that will come with these moment are signs that you’re doing something new; that you’re being creative; and that your body is learning. Lean into them, don’t be afraid; you’re human and it’s your God-given right to chop ‘L’s with your head held high. Namaste.