Squint your eyes and look closer
I’m not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I’m beyond your peripheral vision
So you might wanna turn your head

-Ani Difranco, 32 Flavors

I’ve had a lotta years to think about why these lyrics resonate with me and I with them. And in various iterations of my life, known as seasons to me, I think they resonate differently. But one thing that I can consistently count on resonating about these lyrics is that they speak to the complexity of the human mind, body, and spirit. And it’s this complexity that attracts my curiosity and wonder, which is why vulnerability works for me. Usually vulnerability [in the appropriate context] provides a window into someone’s complexity. They aren’t just one, two, or even three flavors. They are 32 flavors and THEN SOME!

It’s this capacity for mystery and depth in the human spirit that gives me hope. Hope that our complexity will be nurtured to health by love, and that this will lend itself to creative and compassionate responses to systems that want to keep us simple and un-thinking.

I’ll evade your definition of me every time it’s placed on me. I hope you will too.