When you’re looking upward, there’s no question about the direction your face is pointed in. When you’re walking backward, you know that where you’re going is someplace you’ve been before.
In which way are you pointed, though, when you’re feeling awkward?
Awk is a direction, though most people haven’t heard of it. It’s not a fixed direction, like up or down, north or south, but changes according to context. Awk is the orientation that people see as wrong, the way that’s contrary to expectation, the direction that’s something other than where other people are headed.
Awk is an old viking word that shows an alternative way of being in the world. When we’re awkward, we’re moving in that direction.
The difficult thing is that most people don’t want to acknowledge the awkward path as something that even exists. They feel more comfortable imagining that they live in a world that’s set out along a grid defined by easy binaries: Left and right, to and fro, yes and no.
Being awkward often feels clumsy, and looks ungainly to others. That’s just because it’s moving in dimensions that most people haven’t even imagined. Awkward people use muscles that others don’t even know they have.
Awkwardness is distinct from feeling off kilter in its social nature. Whereas people who feel off kilter sense that they’re somehow misaligned with where they feel their own center to be, awkward people can feel fine on their own terms. It’s dealing with other people’s codes of behavior that throws them off balance.
