Super Freaks

PC: @frankluca

So, if you sleep til you're eighteen...Think of the suffering you'd miss! High school's your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that! Unless you go into academia, but that's a different story.

Frank to Dwayne, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
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I don’t want to be 18 again. I mean there are moments I’d go back to if I had a hot tub time machine—I’d pop in change some things—and readily come back here and reap the benefits of my revisions.

Don’t cut your hair just before your 30th birthday or possibly ever. It’s not a good look for you and find a new stylist. She’s scissor happy and is not looking after your best interests.

Belly button rings look cool, but you’ll hate it, stomach sleeper. Go for the tattoo.

Find a tailor. Your pants are too long. And stop buying clothes you ‘might’ fit into some day.

Laundry is not that hard. Develop a system or your closet door won’t be able to contain the avalanche and it will break.

Gluten is making you look five months pregnant.

Dairy is giving you a pebbly chin.

Soy is making your breasts ache.

Those are the silly things. Then there are the more intimate and painful things we’d all go back and change. But, you don’t get better without suffering. Maybe that’s the secret to living and aging well, embrace the suffering and evolve from it.

I’ve seen Little Miss Sunshine three times now. Twice in the theatre and then I found a copy for 25 cents at Goodwill so we watched it again.

It was darker than I remember and that made it more glorious. My life feels darker than it did 12 years ago. Don’t flood my inbox with concern; it’s just that I’m more acutely aware of pain than I was then. I think we live in a culture of denial. And, with the help of people like Brene Brown and Jordan Peterson, they’re normalizing the breadth of human emotions we’ve oft been taught to tuck away or not talk about.

So, I’ve faced some demons. You’ve shared yours with me—horrible medical diagnoses, messy, messy quagmires, breaking and broken hearts. These are not easy or neatly packaged, they’re heavy and unwieldy. They’re typically a matter of health, heart and soul for which supernatural movement must make an appearance. Some problems have obvious steps forward. But, does anyone really know the steps to healing a heart?

I never liked Jordan Peterson’s assessment that life is not about being happy. Talk about a chokehold on your childhood dreams. In his words,

“I’ve said that some people will tell you that the purpose of life is to be happy and those people are idiots. Happiness is something that is done in with the first harsh blow that life deals you.”

He goes on to say that,

“Life is complex and tragic and difficult, and the problem with the public portrayal of the ideal state of humanness as happiness is that it makes all of these young people feel ashamed of their own suffering.”

Shame in the suffering. As if suffering isn’t painful enough.

Peterson continues with the point of the pain:

“If you’re constantly in a state of satisfaction and happiness, then nothing is going to affect you deeply enough so that you become deep; and life without depth is – by definition – shallow and meaningless.”

The depth is in the suffering and the suffering can be be the catalyst for movement. We often slide back in moments of suffering and loss, but what if we were all attune so that when it was time, we could be there to pull each other forward? Hence, the forward momentum of Little Miss Sunshine.

The movie has been out long enough and I don’t feel bad giving spoilers.

The players are:

The parents (Sheryl and Richard) are on the edge of financial ruin and seem to have a life-sucking partnership rather than life-giving relationship.

The grandfather (Edwin) loves porn and heroin and adores his granddaughter, Olive.

The brother-in-law (Frank) just survived a suicide attempt after being romantically snubbed by his male graduate student, overlooked for a big career boosting grant, fired from his university and kicked out of his apartment.

The brother (Dwayne), full of teenage angst, has taken a vow of silence until he gets into flight school which he literally and metaphorically sees as his way to fly away from this miserable family whom he maintains he HATES.

And, then there’s Olive. The sweet 7 year old daughter, sister, granddaughter who pulls them all together with her passion for a pageant called LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.

A road trip ensues and this miserable group of humans (sans Olive who radiates optimism and innocence) sets off from Albuquerque, NM to Long Beach, CA.

The van breaks down. They improvise.

Richard’s book deal falls apart and he pushes forward.

Frank runs into the object of his affection at a gas station and has to face his pain and humiliation, again.

Grandpa Edwin dies. They steal him from the hospital and shove him into the trunk (as we all do with our deceased loved ones).

Dwayne realizes he’s color blind and won’t make flight school. He has a panic attack and nearly tears the van apart.

And, Olive. Olive is no beauty queen by pageant standards. The pageant reeks of narcissism and pedophelia. The pageant scenes are played to make you feel uncomfortable and questioning humanity. They succeed. Richard and Dwayne beg Sheryl to not let Olive participate. To which mom says,

“We have to let Olive be Olive.”

Olive’s talent is dancing. Or, her choice of talent is dancing. It does not go well by pageant (or parental) standards. But, Olive is being Olive and she is in her zone of innocence and optimism. She is in her passion, her joy and she goes for it. And, in those moments, of being booed and the officials trying to remove her from the stage, her dysfunctional family steps in to dance with her—a healing gesture and moment for everyone.

Sheryl (whom you’re sure had bigger dreams than exhaustedly bringing a bucket of chicken home every night for dinner), Richard (who can’t sell his book), Frank (who survived a suicide attempt), Dwayne (who’s dream is killed by a roll of genetics) and Olive, sweet Olive . . . all dancing together to SUPER FREAK (by Rick James), complete with stripper moves. Yes, stripper moves. Super Freak promised to never let our spirits down and thus, it brought the healing.

Olive radiated innocence and passion. We may not be able to get the innocence back, but we can stop judging and start asking more questions. We can start by not judging ourselves and asking more questions of ourselves, extending ourselves grace. Rob Bell talks about how we’re all students because we’ve never been human before. We’re constantly learning how to be in this world and how to be with each other. We don’t always get it right, but that’s okay because the job of a student is to learn. We learn how to love, how to heal, how to forgive, how to hope and how to offer all of these things to others. Most importantly, I think we learn how to celebrate ourselves, each other and this miraculous journey we are all on together.

My husband and I attended a marriage conference years ago and one of the most important things we learned and one of the most transformational phrases for our marriage was the power of “I need you.” Not, “I love you,” but “I need you.” We want to be needed and we want to be known—not famous or infamous but known by those who matter most to us.

Because being seen and heard are to be known.

We’re all super freaks. Pain and heartbreak are normal. It’s the moments in between, the moments when and where we connect on a supernatural level . . . I think that’s what we live for. It’s in those moments, those in between moments, that we’re understood, heard, seen, wanted.

And, when those in between moments arrive—when we see, hear and know each other and realize how much we need each other, we can dance to Super Freak together (stripper moves not necessary or encouraged) and find healing and joy and love.