No One Who Is Real Is Boring

I forget who wrote this, but a famous socialite who threw the A+ parties at the time would always write at the end of her immaculately printed invitations this line: "And remember, no one who is real is boring." I just love that. It is a wonderful reminder of the responsibility we should aspire to when we attend a friend's party or walk through our lives---don't be boring. It also reminds us of the fact that if we do not spend a lot of energy putting on false fronts and just be open to whoever and whatever we meet, we will avoid being boring. Easier said than done for most people of all ages because most of us struggle with what it means to be "real." If only we had a model for what that would look like.

I have found one.

There is a T.V. show called "An Idiot Abroad." In it, Ricky Gervais sends a man he describes as a total idiot around the world to see several great sites of the world. The Great Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and The Great Wall are just a few he has shown to the man named Karl Pilkington, who is the supposed idiot of the show. I was reluctant to watch it because he had done an earlier show featuring Karl in conversations and Ricky would just laugh and insult him through out the show which was too painful for me to watch. I approached this new show with reluctant suspicion.

After watching several episodes, my take of the show was simply: I love Karl Pilkington. Karl is a 30ish, British man with an admittedly oddly shaped bald head, which makes him look slightly, well...odd, but I just absolutely adore this man and how he thinks and expresses himself. He is the farthest thing from an idiot, and he is definitely NOT boring. He is the model for "real." He simply experiences what is before him with absolute honesty and openness and has no pretense available to him much to his numerous host's dismay at times. As a dinner guest in the tent of a family in the desert, he was shown some of the raw animal parts being served for the meal. When offered a raw sheep eyeball and told not to insult his host he turned to the cameraman and whispered, "Well the problem is I gag really easily, and if I put that in my mouth and gagged, won't that be really worse for them to see me do that than if I just don't eat it, eh?" "That would kind of be worse don't you think because there is no way I can eat that thing." His approach and reaction to everything he sees is brilliantly real, honest, and direct. When he is forced to ride with Hare Krishnas in a bus who get out and dance whenever the bus stops in traffic he reluctantly joins and dances, but says to the camera man, "I know they think this brings happiness to others, all this dancing about, but what if I had my sick mum in an ambulance behind all this trying to get to the hospital...not so happy then, would you be? Isn't that right?"

He is the perfect model for what being "real" means: absolutely uncensored, well meaning, but sometimes stepping on toes as he reacts honestly. I also realized an interesting and rare trait: he never says anything that does not carry an emotion with it. He says nothing that is emotionally neutral. Everything he says carries a vibrancy of emotion whether it is anger, disgust, happiness, fear, embarrassment, whatever, everything he says feels alive. He is certainly never boring.

So why is this trait, this thing we call "real" so rare? Because to be real we have to be vulnerable to whatever comes our way and that is frightening (see Fundamental 1 in my book). Who wants to be vulnerable when we can (at least) appear powerful? We talk of our successes not our failures. We express our happiness in our relationships, not the thorns that are presently catching our shirts. We do not express our fears, and sometimes we can't even say we like a certain song for fear of ridicule by someone musically "smarter" than us. So we emotionally hunch over in our lives and express whatever we can with the hopes that we will appear all together and happy. It sometimes comes off as boring though.

I'm thinking about hosting an "idiot's" party soon. Wanna come? Can you not be boring? Think about that first.