Summation

words that ring

You are not the sum total of your rejections.

Oof! It hit me like a ton of bricks. Though it’s probably more accurate to say it went off like a bell within me. It’s reverberations felt from my belly to my finger tips. Aftershocks of that wisdom continued to ring out for the rest of the day. Something deep within me needed to hear those words. Perhaps that’s why I texted her in the first place, my dear friend J. The marrow in me instinctively knew which of my people would offer up the salve of words.

Rejection never feels good. It always lays somewhere on the spectrum between kinda okay and extremely not okay. After years and years in a creative career, where rejection is woven into the very fabric of the profession, my rejections typically lean closer to kinda okay. I’ve learned to tamper my excitement until there is cause to be excited. I’ve to learned to better accept when things don’t go my way because occasionally things do go my way. I’ve learned that if-not-this-one-then-the-next-one actually has some merit. I’ve learned that calling something a “numbers game” means that more success automatically means more rejection.

However all this hard-won, centering, peaceful, buddhist wisdom that took years to cultivate went right out the window like a monkey throwing wet shit when I got that email. The words staring back at me on the screen sent me into a tailspin. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to….” The words gutted me in a way I hadn’t expected. Mostly I was shocked.

I was shocked because of my naivety, ego, and stupidity. Without going into too much detail, because I’m not quite ready to dive into specifics, I thought this thing I applied for was a done deal. I erroneously believed I was a shoe-in for this thing and that submitting an application was simply a formality. I had already checked that box.

So when I read that word, “unfortunately”, my stomach churned as all that naivety, ego, and stupidity came crashing down right on my head. Not only was I an idiot but I was an unwanted idiot. The grief of rejection multiplied itself by the pain of realizing my calculations were all wrong. I was an amateur, the very thing I work so hard against on a daily basis.

With my head in the center of the storm, I knew J was the right person to lean on. She has a depth and perspective that always make me feel seen, safe, and supported. I quickly regurgitated feelings at her via text. It made little to no sense. All I could really articulate in those first moments were “I’m sad.” The clarity about my naivety, ego, and stupidity would befall me later.

In classic J fashion she responded in such a thoughtful, tender, caring way. Tucked within her response was that phrase - you are not the sum total of your rejections. (To be perfectly transparent, I want back to reference the text and realized I’m paraphrasing her exact words). That idea offered the smallest buoy to grab onto, a tiny foothold in the chaos of shock and grief. Truth has a tendency to do that.

Because of J’s words, and because time is the great softener of all things hard, this particular rejection has inched it’s way closer to kinda okay. At least, it’s headed in that direction day by day. All things considered, it’s still fresh for me. But the more I sit with those words, the more they help. The truer they become. The more they ring.

We are not the sum total of our rejections. We are not a manifestation of all the times we’ve heard “no.” We are not the physical embodiment of undesirability. In the same way that we’re not the sum total of our mistakes or our failings or our diagnoses. We aren’t the sum total of the dumb shit we’ve said or the times we’ve hurt people or the lies we’ve told.

Our summation, our wholeness, goes far beyond that. We humans are expansive and complex. We’re no one thing. We’re not an exact point. We’re a billion pixels that make an ever-changing shape with a spectrum of bright colors and continual movement. We take up too much space to be the sum total of a time that someone said “no.” We’re bigger than that.

So the next time you or I get hit with a gut-punch of rejection, and there will be a next time, perhaps we could take a moment to stand back from that single point of pain and see the larger picture of our beautiful, wild, bright, intricate existence.

And if that isn’t working, just text J.