True Size
Many of us have been asked, explicitly and implicitly, to be less of what we are by nature.
To bring less of how much we have to say, how much emotion we have, how much body we take up, how much we want, and how much we dare to receive.
For many years, I believed the notion that me being big, as big as I naturally and helplessly am, takes away space, size and opportunities from others.
Shining my light was characterized as opposed to the shining of others, to the extent that I lived under the commandment to work hard every day to smother, if not extinguish myself entirely. Because if I did not strive every day to be less, I was taking the chance of radiance away from someone else.
The game I thought I was playing was: I will be less so that you can be more.
In actuality the game I played was I will be less so that you can be also be less.
Do you have the belief somewhere in you too, that you have to choose between your own flourishing and that of others?
This is a lose-lose falsity and both choices are bad. Choosing myself, I feel guilty and bound in complex obligations, debt and owing. Choosing the other, even out of love, I betray myself and my genuine purpose of embodiment on planet earth in these momentous, transitional times.
This controller-crafted distortion in thought leads some of us to shrink from the challenge of living our own lives, and instead live as haunts behind the lives of others, thinking that that’s what goodness is. Feeling not free to claim our own lives, we find a role supporting another to live their life.
When unacknowledged for our sacrifice, the choice not to live our own life purposes, we can feel intensely bitter, hurt by our own self-forsaking. Not able to see how our personal choice not to shine means that we become a dead bulb in the circuit, reducing group radiance and connection.
The choice to not be ourselves harms us immeasurably. The lionsong Big captures some of the pain I encounter as I have been slowly working through this topic.
One of the things that I love, love, love about improv is that it teaches us experientially without any psychotherapy whatsoever how to balance the two principles of wholeheartedly supporting others with fully, joyfully bringing our true selves.
From within a scene, people having wants, desires, drives, points of view, quirks and oddities enrichens the group creative field. Without that, we have truly nothing to play with at all.
On the other hand, we cannot only pursue our own aims, the scene quickly dies. What a scene needs is two fully embodied humans playing together, cooperating fully with the other, each allowing and encouraging the other to be more.
In improv, at the very least, if not life at large (which I do believe), this is completely true:
I am more so that you can also be more.
I would like to take a moment to articulate this truth: the world needs us to be more, not less. The earth is languishing in the cold shadows of our self-abandonment, our refusal to be the light we are. Nature needs all of us, every single one of us, to be much, much bigger. To stand up and to radiate.
The following song from Sun Wedding is about a lot of things, but one thing it is about is our true, hidden size. I admit in this song that I am, in actuality, gigantic.
Are you also? Yes. You are.
May it be helpful today, big friend.
In spite of the fact that you’re here and no matter how long you linger,
I will press on past you this time.
However it is you got into me, and whatever it takes to clear you,
I will move on beyond you this time.
Every time I try to expand the lines,
to take up some space
you have shown your face.
It’s clear your purpose is
to keep me from sprouting,
to keep my flame down low,
to keep me from shouting.
But tide is high, I am gigantic,
and I am deep and oceanic
My winter swells are north atlantic,
your chance of passage is titanic
there is a monolith of my face,
so big you photograph me from space
and my true nature is unlaced,
I’m so immense you call me a place
In spite of the fact that you’re here
and no matter how long you hang around,
I’ll press on past you this time.
No matter what you throw at me,
and no matter which way it spins me,
I will push on past you this time
Every time I grow into what I can’t help but be,
you have to come around to put your weight on me.
But I can’t help but seed, and I can’t help but bloom
you pinch off all my leaves, and you force my fruit
I’m rising high and I’m volcanic
and my body’s geomantic
My natural language is botanic,
my inclinations are romantic
You could make a star map off my true size,
lightyears of vertical and lengthwise
my love’s as limitless as blue skies,
go ahead and try to stop my sunrise
All that was taken from life is being brought back to us now
All that was stolen from life is being brought back to us at last
You who were taken from the vine you’re being brought back to us now
all children gone missing in the night are being brought back to us from the past
Like a crown of flowers, you’re reviving in our waters
like a crown of flowers, every single son and daughter
My Invitation to You:
Consider that living creatures and plants tend to get bigger, take up more space, have more radiance, power, clarity and influence with age.
How do you feel about yourself, the amount of size you currently feel you have? Do you feel satisfied, or do you long for more?
If you long for more (as I do), how do you relate to that longing? Do you try to suppress it, or do you allow the longing to speak to you of all that you could have been, could still maybe be in this lifetime if permitted and supported?
Make a visual art piece (or as always, use an art form that you prefer for this) that in some way represents your potential true size.
As an acorn’s potential true size is to be an oak tree.
What is it that you would be, could be, all things being equal and if it hurt nobody else? If everything you needed to become all that you are, came to you at last?
Thanks for reading, friend
——
Thumbnail image respectfully borrowed from The Wonderful Things You Will Be, by Emily Winfield Martin.