What Is It Like To Meet Caitlyn Jenner?

Will the real Bruce Jenner step forward...and can you
'work it' when you do?

Recent commercials beckon us to meet ‘Caitlyn’, Bruce Jenner’s lipsticked reincarnation of himself.  The media has decided to make a spectacle of this man's life, but there is an important truth at the center of the story.

We’re living in an age of selfies and the chance to dote on ourselves with unprecedented affection. With the right image, editing, content, and timing, we can go viral, and the best versions of ourselves can be streamed to anyone in the world with an Internet connection.

Facebook depresses me.  It makes me feel left out.  I scroll through the images and I think to myself, ‘Why not me? Where are my friends?  Where are my trips?  My loves?  My laughter?  My parties?’  Facebook makes everyone else’s world seem better than the one I’m living in.

Practice Manager, Peace Corp
Activist, Dice Thrower, Braveheart,
Brie Messier

My friend Brie Messier seems nuts.  She does things that blow my mind.  Her Facebook page isn’t a show set; it’s a psychiatrist’s couch.  As her day unfolds, good and bad, we hear about it.  Screw ups, high points, wrong decisions...it’s a brave revelation of who she is, that quite frankly, at times, seems bonkers.   She does things like take on entirely different jobs and new careers, and then she drops all of that and joins the Peace Corps.  As part of this last decision, she sold all of her belongings and put animals that she cherishes in the care of others.  Doesn’t that seem crazy?  Not to Brie.  Brie risks.  When I think of Brie, I think of that person at the far end of the craps table.  She’s got crowd of cheering people on all sides and she’s in the middle of them, rattling a cup of dice hard and high.

Did Olympic training prepare Jenner for
a marathon towards identity and
actualization?

I look at another woman, Caitlyn Jenner, and begin to see past the wig, eyeliner and big hands.  I get a glimpse of someone who,when everything she does is placed before the world to judge, walks forward on her own path, towards her own vision.  Forget about discovering herself. That she’s accomplished.  Like Brie, Caitlyn is being who she is.  She’s deaf to her detractors.  Instead, she stays focused on what she knows to be important: that there’s value inside of her, in who she is.  It occurs to me that she pursues this goal for herself with the same determination that took her across Olympic finish lines years ago.

I challenge my own through-line of thinking.  I ask myself, ‘what’s so great about being true to oneself?’  Isn’t that just another cliché; another platitude that we tell ourselves in team meetings and feel-better pow-wows with friends?  Well, I’m not entirely sure, having never been ‘true’ to myself, but I suspect there are two, fairly-great rewards. 

It must be pretty darn empowering.  Any brave journey alone, successfully completed, grows balls, or in the case of Caitlyn Jenner, at least rearranges them a bit. I think that people that take their psyche to the service shop, take it apart, put it back together, and then floor it on the open road, roar. I think the wind flies better through their hair.  I think people in their housecoats, checking for mail in the box, hold their hats when these people blow by and look down the road for some time after they’ve past.

What thoughts, aspirations, or inspirations are you stimulating
in those that you pass?

And I think that people like Caitlyn and Brie go a long way to ending loneliness in the world.  They make people like me less embarrassed about my differences.   They make me braver.  Because people like Brie and Caitlyn exist, I make more eye contact, I shake more hands, I talk out of nervousness less, I connect more.

If I had the same determination of these women, I’d be on my own path to self-discovery and actualization.  I’d be at the perfume counter saying, 'I’ll have two squirts of whatever they’re having'. I’d be roaring down my own road, blowing up old ladies skirts and knocking the straw hats off farmers’ heads.  I would be me…and who knows what would come of that?

Cock of the walk or just plain chicken?
Crowing or growing?