Giles Andreae, Giraffes Can’t Dance
The kids were loving it. Their eyes were open wide and their heads were bobbing along to the beat of the music.
I didn’t blame them. It was a great movie.
The Greatest Showman is the Hollywood version of the life of P. T. Barnum.
And by Hollywood version, I mean that they probably took some liberties with the narrative. They may have made Barnum a bit more handsome than he truly was. They may have beefed up some of the drama, and sugarcoated some of the pain. But the essence of who P. T. Barnum was and what he did remains the same. The founder of the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus, Barnum searched far and wide for the most peculiar individuals alive to attract people to his show. Utilizing individuals from various ethnic backgrounds, with unique talents, and with wildly different looks, in order to drive large audiences to a celebration of spectacle, he employed a seven-foot giant; a man who was only three feet tall; a seven-hundred-pound man; conjoined twins.
Individually, they were castoffs, unwanted, ignored, pitied, or even despised.
But when brought together, they became something else.
Something to celebrate.
In order to take center stage, though, these characters needed to recognize that what seemed to be their greatest imperfection was in fact their greatest asset.
The very thing they had been hiding for years needed to come out into the light.
When Lettie Lutz (played by Keala Settle) stepped to the center of the ring to sing “This Is Me,” she sang what became an anthem for anyone who had ever felt a bit out of place.
Lettie was a fully bearded lady, an anomaly. She had spent most of her life hiding from the gaze of strangers. But P. T. Barnum gave her permission to step out, and step into her power.
“I am not a stranger to the dark,” she began.
Barnum’s entire cast was once sheltered from stares and hidden from view to save them from ridicule and insults. No one wanted their broken parts.
But when the impresario invited them out of the shadows, it did something powerful. It allowed them to own their differentness, to celebrate their scars.
Joining a band of misfits allowed Lettie to embrace who she was, flaws and all.
This shift was powerful.
She finished her anthem with these words:
I’m not scared to be seen.
I make no apologies…
This is me!
I’m not scared to be seen.
These words reveal what is often holding us back from true connection with others.
We are afraid to be seen.
Sure, we curate an image of ourselves on the Internet, but we hide away the real us. We don’t own our broken parts. We don’t share our deepest burdens.
We turn away from connection because we think we have something to hide. After all, what if we get too close? What if they see the truth? Better to stand apart, alone, protected from view.
But there is great power, my friend, in stepping into the light.
There is immense healing in sharing scars, exposing weaknesses, and revealing shame.
It is the only way we’ll let people in.
Even after a speaking career that spans more than a decade and the positive reception to my first book, On Fire, I still feel anxiety about showing people my scars—the ones on the outside, and the ones on the inside.
Perhaps nowhere does that fear manifest itself more acutely than when I speak to Focus Marines.
Focus Marines was established a decade ago, when a group of Marines began seeing a significant uptick in both PTSD in returning servicemembers and a lack of services to support them once they were home. They funded an outreach program for veterans with PTSD to receive eight days of counseling, leadership training, anger management, and professional development. I’ve been fortunate to partner with them more than forty times over the past decade. Each time I feel as if I stand on sacred ground when I walk into the room.
And for many of those sessions I felt as if I didn’t really belong.
They fought and served on the front lines of war for our country.
I haven’t.
They earned the right to wear a uniform, to salute our flag, and to be honored by others.
I have not.
They are muscular, they’re chiseled, they’re warriors.
Um, have you seen me?
One of the ways I used to armor up, to try to make myself feel worthy, was by wearing an oversized sport coat so that I had more physical stature when I entered the room. It was an attempt to cover up my weaknesses, to look bigger than I was. It also conveniently covered the scars on my arms that are immediately apparent when I don’t wear long sleeves. This was my uniform, my way of fitting in for the first nine years I spoke at Focus Marines.
This whole trying-to-be-something-I’m-not? Trying to fit in, belong, and feel worthy? It’s something I’ve been doing for years.
It’s what I did in grade school through the use of humor. My being the class clown distracted everyone from thinking about the kid who got burned.
It’s what I did in high school and college with drinking. Being the life of the party made me feel more comfortable, helped me imagine I was fitting in.
It’s what I did in my adult life with performance. Being an entrepreneur, running a business, being successful made me feel worthy.
Throughout it all, though, I hid away the broken parts.
A few years ago, a chance encounter with a young man after a speaking engagement helped change that. I had finished speaking at a camp and was standing in line at the dining hall when I felt a tug on my jacket sleeve.
Looking down, I saw a little boy with a transcendent smile.
He looked up at me and said, “We are the same.”
I knelt to his level, looked into his eyes, and responded playfully, “We are?”
He nodded and repeated himself: “We are the same!”
He then held up his right hand and revealed that, like me, he didn’t have any fingers on it. He came closer, gave me a hug, introduced himself as Caleb. And one more time he said, “We are the same.”
He was no more than nine years old. I was approaching forty.
He was African American. My ancestors came from southern Ireland.
He was born in an urban environment and had limited resources. I was born in the Midwest and into a life of privilege.
He was wearing a T-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts, ready for a day of summer-camp fun. I was wearing a dark suit, a long-sleeved shirt, and dress shoes, totally overdressed for the day.
And yet, looking into his eyes, seeing his joy, observing his hand—and his heart—I realized he saw what many of us too frequently miss.
The very things we feel make us undesirable, or different, or broken, are in reality the very things that pull us closest together. They are the things that remind us of our shared stories and the larger truth that we’re not alone.
With Caleb’s example and encouragement, I shed that suit jacket—not only for the rest of that day at summer camp, but for my first speech the following week.
It was a Monday evening, and the audience happened to be a bunch of Marines. I showed up that evening without a suit coat or long sleeves. I came in wearing short sleeves, exposing skinny arms, scarred skin, no fingers. I put it all out there.
No more hiding.
My anxiety was high as the leader introduced me, but I tried to remember Caleb’s wise words. We are the same. Though I felt out of my league with the men and women in that room, they too knew what it was to embark on a challenging journey when the outcome is unclear.
They too knew what it felt like to face injury, and recovery, and a life that had completely changed…but still held possibility.
They too had fought some terrible battles and accumulated thick scars—some on the outside—all on the inside.
We are the same.
As I approached the stage, as I stood before them and prepared to speak, something happened that had never happened before in my entire career: I received a standing ovation…before uttering a word.
As I stood before them, scars and all, rather than viewing me as different, less than, or inferior, they saw a guy they could relate to, who might actually understand their journey.
Owning my inadequacies had allowed the walls to come down and the connection to begin. All without saying a word.
I’m not scared to be seen.
I make no apologies.
This is me.
When we are honest about who we are, embrace it, and share it with others, that’s when true connection occurs. When hearts open. When walls come down.
I spoke with Brené Brown about leadership on my podcast. She shared something that has stuck with me, advice I’ve attempted to heed: “Fear is not the barrier to courageous leadership. The biggest barrier is self-protection. The way we armor up. You can’t lead from an armored place.”1
I learned firsthand that day how powerful it is to take the armor off. My goal is to never put it back on.
My friend, what is your armor? What’s that barrier you’ve established to keep others from knowing the real you? How is that affecting the way you show up, the way you connect, the way you lead?
It is time to let our guard down and step into the light. It is time to own our scars, our stories, our weaknesses, and our wounds so that we can get back to celebrating who we are and connecting with those around us.
We are the same. We belong.
And we are worthy of celebration. Exactly as we are.