You Are The Committee

Nearly a decade ago, I listened to a podcast by Rob Bell titled “We Are the Committee.” In it, he referenced a scene from the film Chariots of Fire where a decision had to be made about whether the runner Eric Liddell could compete on the Sabbath. There was a flurry of discussion, followed by the familiar, stalling suggestion: This is something for the committee.

One of the members looked up and responded simply: “We are the committee.”

I was so moved by that line that I shared the podcast with anyone who would listen. I remember a friend asking me, “Why was this so impactful for you?” At the time, I didn't have a clear answer. But ten years later, I am finally ready to respond.

Somewhere along the way, my mind shifted Bell’s “We” to a “You.”

You are the committee.

Why has that line stuck with me for a decade? I’ve listened to thousands of hours of audio since then, most of which has evaporated from my memory. Why does this one keep resurfacing?

I think it is because most of us go through life asking for permission. We ask for permission to be who we are, to do what we love, to think what we think, or to feel what we feel. Usually, we don't do this out loud. We don’t walk up to people and ask for a hall pass. But we do it inwardly, in our attitudes and our outlook. We are like the little bird in the children’s story, wandering the world asking, “Are you my mother?”

Is this okay? Am I okay? Is it okay that I feel this way?

We take the temperature of every room we enter. We scan the environment to figure out how to navigate, how to fit in, and how to stay safe. We check in with an invisible, external committee to see if we are "enough."

You are the committee.

Hearing it said out loud is freeing; living it is a different discipline entirely. It means realizing you don’t need an outside source to validate your existence. You don’t need a system or a structure to hand you a grade. You are the one who decides. You are the one who validates. You are worthy simply because you are.

As a "Type A" overachiever—a collector of gold stars and straight A's—I spent most of my life looking for external structures to provide that "atta girl" confirmation. To the overachiever, the actual task—selling Girl Scout cookies, taking graduate exams, or a corporate quarterly review—matters less than the grade. We have been trained to value the review over the work, the "likes" over the experience.

I first truly came to terms with this the year after I graduated from seminary. I spent that year living in Scotland on a Fellowship. For the first time in my life, I was free from the evaluation of an external authority. There were no report cards, no exams, no papers, and no quarterly reviews. There was nothing I "had" to do and no one I "had" to report to.

It was complete freedom. It was also deeply unsettling.

I realized early on that this lack of external demand felt "roomy," but also too open, too undefined. I felt the difference viscerally. I had always been a student or a worker—someone being measured, someone proving they were smart enough, dedicated enough, responsible enough. Suddenly, there was no one left to prove my "enoughness" to.

It was liberating, but it required a new kind of skill. It required me to be the one deciding what was essential and what was extra.

I didn't know it then, but that year was the perfect training for the life I live now—a life that has left the traditional path to journey into unmarked territory. Whether it’s freelance photography, writing, gardening, living outside my own country, or connecting with the natural world through horses, I am making the trail as I walk it.

I’ve done a lot of backpacking in the High Sierra of California. I love the backcountry, but my version of "wilderness" usually involves a trail on a map and a set destination. I want to know where I am going and when I will get there. To venture into the wild with no map and no plan terrifies me.

Yet, ironically, that is exactly how I have lived my life: no map, no trail, no plan—just a sense of something leading me forward into the next part of the story.

You are the committee. It is intimidating to lose the externals that tell us who to be. It is frightening to realize there is no one to blame and no one to impress. But it is also the only way to be truly alive.

Martha Beck speaks of the internal compass—that quiet, inner wisdom that leads us if we learn to tune in. When we feel lost, we don’t need to seek out external permission. The wisdom is already in the room.

You are the committee. You don’t need to ask. You already have everything you need.