The Case for Messy, Nervous, 21st-Century Holiness

It'll never be perfect

We tend to set spiritual figures such as Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. on pedestals so high that we forget they walked the same ground we do. We imagine they were born different—stronger, purer, immune to fear. In truth, they were wounded saints, what Henri Nouwen called “wounded healers”: human beings who carried their own doubts, heartbreak, and trembling, yet still chose love.

Gandhi was once so terrified of public speaking that he fled the courtroom mid-sentence during his first case as a lawyer. MLK faced waves of depression and deep fatigue. On the cross, Jesus cried, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” The Buddha left everything behind not because he had the answers, but because suffering broke something open in him. These weren’t people untouched by pain—they were people who let pain refine them rather than define them. They weren’t fearless. They just didn’t make fear their master.

In today’s world, we talk openly about mental health, trauma, and vulnerability. There’s growing recognition that real strength isn’t in pretending to be invincible, but it’s in showing up anyway, even when you’re trembling. In that light, maybe it’s time to stop treating spiritual figures as untouchable icons. Maybe their power wasn’t in their perfection, but in their humanness. This is the same humanness we all carry.

And what about the states we associate with these figures—compassion, forgiveness, stillness, peace? These aren’t otherworldly qualities reserved for monks and mystics. They’re human capacities, not divine prizes. You don’t need a robe, a religion, or a retreat to access them. They live in the nervous system, in a breath, in a decision to pause before reacting.

You can feel sacred in the middle of a traffic jam. You can embody grace in the way you listen to someone who’s hurting. The idea that we have to be someone else, somewhere else, to live from love — it’s simply not true.

Right now, we’re seeing the rise of a new kind of spirituality. Spirituality has gone open-source: no gurus, no gatekeepers, just messy humans sharing patches and updates. A lot of the talk on Instagram centers on “oneness” and non-duality—seeing the inseparable nature of everything. Those glimpses can be life-changing, but they’re often delivered in fragmentary reels and quotes, stripped of context. Book readership is down; deep study gets replaced by 30-second guru clips. Yet awakening is never a one-and-done moment. It’s an ongoing dance of integration and transformation, and life is the teacher that keeps handing out plenty of lessons.

The truth is, we live in a very dual world and have to navigate its tides. Some days we’re reactive, tired, or raw; other days we’re centered, generous, and kind. Naming that—“part of me feels reactive right now”—is far cooler than pretending to float above it. That honest naming is the mark of a wounded saint in the making.

We’re moving away from guru culture and toward something more honest: a spirituality that doesn’t separate the healer from the wounded, or the sacred from the messy. In a decentralized world where authority is questioned and authenticity is prized, the idea of becoming your own source of light is more relevant than ever. Why?

Because the world is aching. Between burnout, climate grief, headline rage, algorithmic overload, many of us feel overwhelmed and under-resourced. It’s easy to think we have to wait until we’re “healed enough” or “clear enough” to make a difference. But if the people we admire most didn’t wait, why should we? They walked into the fire shaking and still gave warmth to others. We can do the same.

There’s nothing that says you can’t live a life of profound love, or deep forgiveness, or transformative service. And lose your shit every once in a while and curl up in a ball. You don’t need to be perfect to be powerful. You don’t need to be fearless to be free. And you certainly don’t need to be someone else to be holy.

Let’s stop worshipping saints as if they were exceptions and start recognizing them as examples. We are all wounded saints in the making. You don’t need to float or glow or have all the answers. You just need to be willing to show up honestly, vulnerably, and with love. That’s what changes the world.