As I post more online, I’ve come up against all the usual resistance that comes with that. The usual demons about not being good enough or my posts being uninteresting. Honestly, I don’t even bother fighting those because at this point, they’re not wrong. I’m literally throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks for me. It’s a learning period, so I’m currently living the saying ‘you can’t fail if the goal is experience!’

Then, while watching another video, I saw a creator talking about how she hates being misunderstood, and had to fight the urge to correct people. That’s when it kind of clicked for me that the hardest thing about posting yourself publicly is not being seen, but being willing to be seen wrong.

One of the earliest lessons I learned growing up was that we simply cannot choose how other people view us and our actions. It would frustrate and upset me when people read me and my intentions or actions wrong, but this was out of my control. You can do everything right and still be vilified. Conversely you can do everything wrong and be glorified.

Unfortunately, the stakes can be very high when it comes to walking the tightrope of being liked or disliked. One wrong move can have everyone turn on you, though one right move will rarely do the opposite. We’ve heard it before, how humans throughout history needed to be liked and accepted as part of the tribe for survival or risk death by being cast out. I’m not sure if we truly have it wired into our brains or not (I’m not a neuroscientist, unfortunately), but it runs deep in our social programming.

In a world still gripped in the vice of ‘cancel culture’, it is a scary prospect to think you might get cancelled and potentially left without any other opportunities for the rest of your life. I’m a brilliant catastrophiser, so my mind does tend toward this possibility, knowing that it has happened before (see Monica Lewinsky or Peter Norman, for instance). Where would that leave me, if I lost my job, or couldn’t get another one? The reality is that posting online is as dangerous as it is opportunistic, especially for women.

Alas, the world we live in today requires for this high-risk, high-reward trade off. To succeed in life is to be seen by the people who will help you accomplish your goals, be they future collaborators, clients, or fans. Thus, you must be willing to step out and make yourself visible to them.

So you/I need to get comfortable with the possibility of being seen wrong and misunderstood. That’s not easy for anyone, as humans desperately desire to be seen, known, and loved. I don’t think you can be loved without being truly seen, so accepting that you’ll be misunderstood is almost like giving up the hope that you will be loved—or loved by all.

Yet, come to think of it, this is probably a good thing right? Do you really want to be loved by everyone? I mean, there are some real crazy people out there, and violent ones too. Think about it, if my options are a friend who really likes me for who I am, or one that likes how I dress but not my personality or beliefs, I’m going to choose the former.

I’m okay with others not liking me because I don’t think everyone needs to. We are all different human beings with different goals, beliefs, ideas, and understandings of the world. Some of us are going to mesh well and others won’t. All the same, even if you do meet someone who shares many of your traits and beliefs, it doesn’t mean you’ll be automatic besties. People are complex and ever-evolving. Times change, and we change with them.

Back to the point, its like the paradox of tolerance, where if you allow anything, you risk enabling the dominance of intolerance, thus undermining the principle of tolerance. Similarly, if you want everyone to like you, and you act in a way that makes you palatable to all, you are more likely to drive away groups who don’t fit the general status quo, because others won’t make or leave space for them.

I cannot for the life of me find this little comic that illustrated the point, but it looked something like this: a crowd of sheep told to be more tolerant and accept the wolves into their lives. The next image was of only wolves meeting together, because the sheep were not safe enough (or alive enough) to exist there with them anymore. For the sheep, tolerating the wolves meant accepting their own insecurity.

If I want everyone to enjoy my books, I probably wouldn’t write anything meaningful or subversive to accommodate that. However, in doing so I am 1) betraying my own artistic desires and purpose and 2) creating a space in which the people who might share my beliefs won’t see them reflected. As a result, they won’t find me or stick around, and I’m at risk of attracting people who have opposing beliefs to me.

Yucky. I guess that’s all life is though: deciding between these ultimatums. You can have the personal comfort that comes from not rocking the boat, or the community and success that follows from stepping out and potentially being misunderstood.

I think its also important to note that this is all about chance. There is every chance you will be misunderstood, seen wrong and judged for it. Yet, there is also every chance that you will be loved, admired, and elevated for it too.

You can live in fear that things will never work out, and you’ll be misunderstood or you can try something and see where it leads you.