Come Out Everyday

By Kenneth Winfrey, in viewpoints
Thursday, October 11 2007, 8:49AM

Kenneth Winfrey Reports

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. This is the day when most of us expect to hear stories about those of us brave enough to cross the threshold of the proverbial “closet” to letting our loved ones know that we are either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or otherwise. You will, but that’s not all I’m going to tell you about today.

When we talk about “coming out” it is generally in the context of another discussion about how important it is to claim your right to be open about who you are as LGBT. It is also often about the oppression heaped upon us as we are forced to deny the truth of who we are. Well, as we all know, denying the truth of who we are is not limited to sexuality. It is something that we can do unconsciously in many areas of life, like I did.

When I Came Out

Sexuality, for me, was just the beginning. After I discovered my sexual truth, I found myself languishing in “the life.” I had no direction. My mother had kicked me out of the house because she didn’t understand me. I quit school because I thought the professors didn’t understand me either. At 21, I was living without purpose, but, I knew that I was gay. And so did everyone else! Big deal! Now what? Even after I came out, I was still oppressed in the context of my sexuality because all I was was “gay.” I had spent so much energy processing that one fact, and fighting off the disapproval of others, that I hadn’t paid much attention to anything else in my life.

I was doing contract administrative work for some of the top companies in St. Louis, but I didn’t like it because I didn’t have the clarity of purpose to make choices about the kind of work I did. Consequently, I didn’t work a whole lot and I was barely paying my bills every month. With a specialty in working with corporate publications (employee and computer manuals, forms, flowcharts, etc.), I was already a designer, but I didn’t know it. Having a high school diploma from the School of Visual and Performing Arts didn’t seem to make my career path any clearer either… That’s because back then I thought that creativity meant that I would be a “starving artist.”

My work had given me the opportunity to see a lot of the business world first-hand, and I don’t think of it as altogether “wasted” time but, I soon realized that it was “time”—time for me to make some more decisions about how I wanted to live and what it would take to get me there. So, on days there was no work, waiting for the phone to ring in that apartment in St. Louis’ Central West End that I could barely afford, I would read mostly about philosophy and politics, trying to find my place in this world.

I was bitter about my situation, and I thought my misery was rooted in being pushed aside for work because I was black and/or gay. But then, I had to accept the fact that no one had “put” me in the situation I was in. I was there because I hadn’t chosen anything else for myself. Through my reading and some serious self-analysis, I came to understand that I could overcome my feelings of lack of purpose, oppression, depression and hopelessness by choosing instead to make meaningful contributions to my community. Instead of being resentful, I also came to the realization that my “oppression” in being unhappy with work was a call to discover my divine gifts. I had to come out again, but this time, I had to come out as a professional. A professional “what” though…?

Finding My Bliss

I had to begin the journey of development and experimentation to find out “what.” I discovered that being happy as a part of the productive work in my community meant these 2 things for me:

1. Determining (and accepting) what I wanted to do,
2. Developing the relationships and/or skills required to turn it all into action.

Finding what I wanted to do was the most difficult thing for me because I could not see very well beyond the position(s) that I had been given happened upon (administrative assistant, outcast, boy-toy, etc.), and for a while, I no longer dreamt of anything else. I had been so long living to be who I thought everybody else expected me to be that I had forgotten to be myself.

I had even started hoping to become like someone else. I wanted to have a car like this person, a house like that person, money like somebody else, etc. I would soon realize that the fundamental problem with these kinds of ambitions is that they were too closely tied with other people’s destiny. That’s when I had to take stock in myself to discover my own.

Finally, I realized that I had to dream of being me at my best; not being “like” than someone else at their best. As Russell Simmons says with the title of his new book, “Do You!”

Finding what I wanted to do involved re-allowing myself to become excited about the world again. As a member of a “rejected class,” and as an “adult” I had become bruised, jaded and not very excited about life; but I did remember that as a child, I was often very excited about the world around me. That excitement had lost its luster, like it does for most of us, with time and the constant barrage of the word “No” that we hear, in one form or another, as we are taught boundaries. One of the things I found most exciting as a kid was the music played around the house as I grew up and I still love music today.

I had the privilege of growing up listening to a diverse body of musicians that included great artists like Theloneous Monk, Phil Woods, Nancy Wilson, Chaka Khan, Patti Labelle, Prince, Luther Vandross, and Anita Baker. Thus, I have always loved to listen for the subtleties of a musical composition. I can often be found sitting with my headphones paying attention for a specific phrase, tone, “pip” or “tap.” Moreover, music class was virtually a part of the family general education requirements. My great-aunt was a pianist and she taught me to play piano for voice. My gradmother was the church organist and a singer. Like my mother too, I am also a singer.

However, I chose not to develop a career in music. And, even though I am not a professional singer, I still love music and I apply many of the same principles in the work I do now. Writing (which can be considered a performance art) and graphic design require the same sensitivities and are just as fulfilling in different ways.

The use of language is not only present in my essays; it is also present in the copy, slogans and even the web programming code I write for my clients. They are like lyrics to a song. The colors and graphics of each web site, booklet, brochure, or business card are like the notes on a scale. The specifics of where the ideas, shades of color or lines fall on a page are not very different from the detail that goes into making sure that “pip,” “tap” or key change will happen when it should in a song. Ideally, each document is a soundless symphony of color, geometry and words.

How I Found My "Calling"

Developing the relationships and skills required to turn it all into action meant returning to school at 23 to get more training in writing, as well as design (I will be 35 on October 18) to develop myself as a visual artist. I graduated when I was 26, and I believe that it’s never too late to go back to school. Since then I have worked to build relationships and grow my business into what it is today.

I believe that we each have unique gifts, but we have to choose how they are expressed in our lives, no matter how long it takes. I found that there is no “one” thing that I must do; there are plenty of different ways to express the same gifts—I just had to figure out what those gifts were. I also know that I will discover more gifts, because as human beings, we are always growing, changing and evolving. I am looking forward to it, as we all should.

I no longer visualize myself as a “starving artist” and give myself permission to be prosperous as the creative individual that I am. I believe that happiness and living well can be achieved by doing things that are lucrative AS WELL AS the things that are fulfilling. I believe that there is a balance for each of us, but I also realize that it isn’t always obvious, and that it may even be a little difficult for some of us (or those around us) to accept, just as it was when we accepted our sexuality.

Nevertheless, despite the challenges--when we dare to explore the depths of who we are, and then we proclaim the truth of who we are--we can only be a benefit to the world and ourselves. Come out everyday through the contributions you make to your world. Don’t let your sexuality be the only thing that defines you, or that you have to share with others.

“To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

~William Shakespeare

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