Platform Your Idiosyncrasies

Why Your Quirks Matter

Aight. Based on the title, lemme make a quick (dis)qualifier.

If you have a penchant for picking your nose and spreading your nasty boogers on your clothes, you may not wanna platform that.

If you get agitated by folks falling asleep during your speeches and the offense sets you off to the degree that your behavioral habit of throwing shoes at inattentive folks is engaged, you probably shouldn’t platform that.

Hygiene and anger aside, what truly brings this topic of idiosyncrasies to mind is the reality that the things we do that aren’t perceived as normal and desirable—and cost us the jeers of the public and our peers—don’t have to conform to the patterns of society’s most cherished.

I preached my first sermon 6 years ago, and when I watched the video I couldn’t find the corny and discombobulated me that my friends endearingly flame. I was conjuring the amalgamation of my favorite preachers’ styles in hopes that my delivery would land as authentic and appealing to the listeners. Fam, can I tell you it was a travesty?

Hiding behind the lack of quirks we believe our heroes have to prevent anyone from seeing our true ways of interaction is a hard habit to kick, but it’s worth doing so. And, it’s a sign that we perhaps misunderstand and don’t notice the quirks undergirding all that polish we tend to admire in our favorite communicators.

Before I continue, I encourage everyone to find communicators and performers worth studying as a framework to construct your own authentic way of showing up in a public space. Kobe Bryant modeled the majority of his game off of Michael Jordan’s. Devin Booker and Jason Taytum are near reincarnations of Kobe. So, the problem is not looking like others; it’s using their brand to preclude being potentially rejected in the future by your preferred audience due to the fear they may want someone other than you.

Keep that accent if it brings your whole self to bear.

Don’t despise that stutter. We need it, if you’re willing to share it.

Keep counting by 7s instead of 10s because it gratifies your inner child who thought organizing your life by a biblical number would please the heart of God.

Don’t stop pumping your fists to appease those who aren’t as excited as you.

It’s important for me to note that the success of others is not predicated on my romanticized hope for a world that accepts others on the basis of their humanity rather than the flawed constructions of Eurocentric beauty standards and greedy production centers that hold their clients to unmanageable levels of stress to maintain their appeal in the public eye. Xenophobes will always try to displace immigrants and find any of their “abnormal” qualities to categorize them as affronts to the American way. I understand the pressure to assimilate and the impossibility of surviving in some circles without doing so. Yet, I still hope.

There’s a reason I didn’t resolve the story of my preaching journey with tips on how to resist the urge to replicate others instead of ourselves; it’s because my quirks still feel like bothers to me instead of blessings.

But, I still commend you to embrace and platform your quirks, as I try to do so myself because your friends and churches and schools and gyms and banks and committees need them.

I’ll leave you with this: A year ago, I was driving with one of my friends whose disability has barred him (more accurately, the arrogance and able-ist society we abide in has prevented him) from living in his gifts in ways that his closest friends know would change the world. In a moment of deep transparency he looked at me through teary eyes saying, “Zeru, your corny jokes and presence have made life easier for me this last year.”

I’m not saying there weren’t other factors at play, but, Beloved, please platform your idiosyncrasies. They have the power to uplift the trampled of society and to empower those who are yearning to live how they were created. It may bother those who believe life is about being prim and pristine, but it’ll invite the brokenhearted—and who knows, perhaps the bothered will become those who discover the blessing of their own idiosyncrasies.

Luh y’all, big time,

Ru.

Photo by Dan Parlante on Unsplash