McKenzie Merriman

The thought first came to me after an especially irritating night of listening to my coworkers make fun of other people. Cruel people are cowards. They’re afraid of what might happen if they were kind to people they don’t like, avoiding the hard work it takes to be compassionate. It takes guts to be kind, to consider the other person, to keep your mouth shut.

If you had the guts to live like this, you too would live like this.

We all have an idea of who we should be, or the kind of person we want to be. It’s more simple than listening to your conscience, a dapper grasshopper that lives in your pocket, telling you what’s right and wrong. It’s the undeniable truth of our Self that knows the ways we hold ourselves back. Your own voice saying “Don’t be an asshole”, “Keep your place clean”, “Visit your grandma”. However, it takes guts to listen to yourself and take the advice you know you need the most, the advice no one else could give you. Growing into your best self means refining the lens through which we look at ourselves; critical yet loving, idealistic yet realistic. Which key am I not using? What door have have I been ignoring?

THE LIFE YOU WANT TO LIVE, THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE.

Sometimes I don’t have the guts. I don’t have the guts to let it go, to move on. I hold this stinky judgement of the cowards so fiercely that I end up reeking of my own cowardice. Sometimes sticking to your guts can make you feel like a square, but it takes guts to be a square. It gets easier to trust your gut when you surround yourself with gutsy people. People with the guts to sober up, fight their compulsions, take risks for the sake of their own happiness. People with the guts to say “I can be better, and I will be.” Stick it to the man! The man wants to keep you down, hating yourself and feeling helpless against your own internal blocks. Living up to your own standards feels better than the instant gratification that comes with shoving the truth down and numbing yourself to reality. Life is an adventure, an opportunity to jump right into the deep end and soak in every moment, in the moment. Don’t harbor the past like a ghost ship or dread a future with yourself.

Now, one might think “Everyone’s got the guts to live their life! That’s free will, baby!” but I disagree. I live in a city where people take pride in being shitheads. Being a hardened asshole shows the world “I don’t give a fuck what you think!” but maybe you should care what people think, or more importantly, how people feel. I would argue that most of the people out there aren’t doing what it takes to be their best self. They have the freedom to choose, and they choose to be an asshole, either because it’s funny, or comforting, or distracts from the fact that they are a coward.

But: a coward that finds it within themselves to choose differently, to GUT themselves… that is where real gutsiness is found.

Whether you think you have the guts, or want to fake it till you make it, we have a t-shirt available for you. I felt so compelled to tell the world (and myself) that living my life takes guts that I reached out to artist and friend Hannah Manocchio at Snakes + Acey’s to print a limited run of shirts that read “If you had the guts to live like this, you too would live like this.”

I’ve doled out a handful of tees to the people in my life I feel embody the sentiment, and I’m ready to spread the wealth with you, my friends, acquaintances and strangers of the internet. The price is low, and the response from people is astounding—head over to my shop to tell me how you have the guts to buy my shirt. Or don’t.

committed relationshp

did you really think a post about guts wouldn’t have a dead bird in it?

keys open doors

McKenzie Merriman is a community cultivator, an arts fulcrum and human living in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her blog is here.

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