52+: Nudged

By EK Bayer, Guest Nudger

Dear Nudgers, At the beginning of 52Nudges 3.0, I invited friends and readers to contribute their Nudging experiences. I love hearing different voices, learning from others’ challenges, and gaining new perspectives. The responses blew me away. I am grateful to EK Bayer for turning a Nudge on its ear and sharing her uniquely raw, real, insightful, and inspiring take on the process. I hope her essay speaks to and inspires you too.

Because we’ve done things differently this week, feel free to mix up your Nudge practice. Follow EK’s lead with the one she drew, draw one of your own, or visit the archives and pick the one that most challenges you. — Kathleen

It is early 2022, and 52Nudges is planning a new launch. I really want to pick a Nudge, have an interesting experience, and write about it. Instead, I limp and scamper through my days, surprised each time the sun sets. I am often nudged, actually. Ever since I broke, life feels like one nudge after another. To get through a day requires at least one nudge. Generally, several. 

What broke me? Betrayal. Financial stress. The loneliness and invisibility of work as a stay-at-home mom. Kids. Life. Age. Things got too hard, and I broke. Not badly enough to disappear, but enough so that most of what I thought I knew shattered.

“The sky is green and the grass is blue” makes perfect sense to me now.

I wake up feeling beat up, but nothing has really changed except in my mind. My mind says anything can happen now. Nothing is a given. It’s a state of mind at the edge of life’s meaning and its absurdity, and from here, it’s hard to participate in the mundane day-to-day. The sun on the clouds is too beautiful. I pick a Nudge, but I put it aside, thinking I don’t have the time or brain space or patience. I almost give up. But because I love everything about 52Nudges, I try again. This one says, “Take yourself seriously.”

Interesting. Does this mean for an hour or for the rest of time? It doesn’t say. To be serious, a person must be productive, scientific, structured, and money-oriented. I am not enough of these things, so I must not be a serious person. Although, since I broke, I don’t seem to smile much, which feels serious. I give in and admit my definition of serious is seriously lacking. What does it mean to take myself seriously?

I have a history of not taking myself seriously. At some point, I decided those things that I could have been serious about were better left unexplored. What inspired me growing up was performing: dancing, singing, choreography, production. It was a world that made sense to me, and where I excelled. I had fun challenging social norms and questioning gender roles with fashion and funky hairstyles. My parents severely cautioned me against taking any of this seriously. Hobbies were good, they said, but they pushed me to be serious about academics, like my older sisters, two very serious over-achievers.

Still, I remember writing a long poem that I thought was incredibly awesome for an honors English class in high school. It was an assignment inspired by The Canterbury Tales, and my opus included a main character who humorously turned out to be gay. This was in 1985, and my teacher was not remotely impressed with my rhyming prowess. I think my gay character deeply offended him. I think he disliked me in general. I also struggled with the boring side of AP English, and he unceremoniously dropped me from the honors program. I remember sitting in his classroom, the shame creeping up my cheeks, as he told my mom I wasn’t up to snuff. Thus ended any notion I should take writing seriously.

The Nudge I’ve drawn does not ask why I am not serious, it says to do. This sounds so easy. What do I take seriously, then? My kids, my wife, climate change, war…. No, no. These things are not me. What are my talents, my dreams, my inspiration? I have almost managed to sidetrack the question with stories about my youth and blaming shame and failure for being frivolous. I haven’t even gotten to the early lesson that taking myself seriously makes others uncomfortable, and the risk of that is rejection. Not just rejected, ostracized. Like so many women, I know this inherently. I know it so deeply that a simple sentence—“Take yourself seriously.”—sends me into a tailspin.

Okay, fine. Here goes. When I stop fighting the idea of taking myself seriously, the first thing that comes to mind is a fight I had in seventh grade with Dana. Dana was the only Black girl in our otherwise all-white class, and I had no appreciation for what that might have been like for her and no understanding of our cultural differences. She was mouthy, and I was appalled. Hadn’t she learned, like I was trying to, that a girl’s place was to be quiet, controlled, and considerate? She was all the things I wasn’t allowed to be, but I couldn’t articulate that. We got into a tiff on the tetherball court, and, while I don’t remember what I said to her, she snapped back, “God gave me a mouth, and I intend to use it!” 

Dear Dana, you are now an inspiration to me, not that you would choose to be. You were likely utterly justified in telling me to piss off. However, your words live on. Thank you for the permission inherent in you being you. I have a voice, too, and I intend to use it, first, to apologize to you for not trying to understand you or be a friend. I’m sorry.

So I begin to use my voice. I listen to it, trust it, respond to its call by writing. An inspiring post pops up on Nextdoor—an online network where neighbors share information and support—and I give in to the impulse to write a public response. I submit it to KQED’s Perspectives, a popular program on our local public radio, and it airs! [Listen to “The Poisoned Owls” here.] Nobody that I care about disses me for it; several friends reach out to applaud my opining. I wake up feeling pumped up, but nothing really changes. Actually, that’s not true. Nothing stays the same, either.

As the weeks pass, it’s terrifying to put myself out there. I’m speaking up more, in general, and navigating blowback. Taking myself seriously is a journey. Thank you, Nudge. It feels like inviting conflict, taking space, being defined in a way I might have to defend. It makes me aware of things I have put up with, and I have to face shame over what I don’t know.

The truth is, I am serious. I’m secretly so far along the serious-scale that I’m almost to the other side, which is absurdity. I dig into suffering, so much so that seriousness loses its context. I am so very serious, I’m afraid if I let it all out, I’ll be uncontainable. I was never not serious; I was hiding. Somewhere along the line, I learned I was serious about the wrong things, I was too much, I didn’t fit. Isn’t that how many of us grow up, hiding our selves and our voices trying to be right, to be good, to fit in?

Be sure, when you toss your salad of Nudges, to include at least one that really scares you.