How are you playing small?
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Oh, this question! This question has been one of favorites to ask clients because it has such a wealth of possible answers but one that has personally long smacked my mind around on the bottom of the ocean floor. This question would lodge itself into me like a jab of coral on my foot and I would go blank; panic.
Unable to come up with many answers I leaned towards the obvious things in my life: I don’t look for opportunities nor do I often put myself out there; I don’t see myself as a hard worker; I’m not making a lot of money. All obvious and capitalistic frames of which I could monitor myself, judge myself, compare myself to what I imagined it meant to make yourself small.
To be small, would be to not be big, to not be the hero or the main character of your own story or any story. Thus, when I imagined being big I imagined that I should be more like a celebrity both in my lifestyle and in my attitude or abilities. Famous. But did I really want to be famous? Was that what it meant to not play small anymore? I shrugged. I don’t know. I don’t know what I really want… which in many ways is why I play small with my life. I don’t know what kind of big I want and capitalistic society is really only offering me one viewpoint to see a big life. Hence, the deep thrumming purposelessness.
This purposelessness has been thrumming a tune inside me for over a year now. I have been unable to hear my own siren songs or have a desire to go in any direction towards any tangible or intangible goal. Where is my drive?
Recently, while in Ocracoke I was thinking about my Oma. My Oma has a tongue that can shoot venom, like a scorpion her mood can change quickly. She gets so angry about two main things. The state of house work and the rampant slights of sexism and misogyny but she’s also extremely polite. Her rage, her anger, her fire, and frankly desire never coming out except around selected loved ones. Despite her politeness, growing up she was one of the fieriest women I knew.
I looked up to her. I listened and learned from her in that way only grandmothers can be with their grandchildren. I learned what it meant to be fiery from her. I could be fiery, full of desire, passion, heat, but only at home, only around loved ones, and only if I was angry could it come out in big bursts. Everything else was small, passive-aggressive, or home bound examples of creativity.
I was playing small. Not because I didn’t have fire or heat or passion but because I locked it away in a castle that was only visible to those within my home, my intimate space, those whom I loved. And the closer you came, the more intensely I would/will yell, scream, cry, or spit venom. I had maladapted all the creative passion into this surge of unrelenting anger I have had very little control over the last couple of decades because I wasn’t allowing my fire out into the world where other people could feel my heat. Btw, as I’m writing this the scene from Shrek where donkey and Shrek charge the castle with Fiona in it and they’re being chased by the big, pink dragon is running through my head.
I had stationed myself like the dragon guarding the castle, “protecting” the princess locked away, but really I was chained to that post. I couldn’t change, just charge anyone who came too close. Who was I waiting for? Donkey to see my potential and uncage me?
No, I have to uncage myself. I have no idea how the pink dragon in Shrek did it but maybe that mystery is part of the journey. I can’t let myself only let my fire out in small “polite” passive aggressive ways outside of my home and unleash a firey demon breath on my loved ones. This is maladaptive survival and it will not lead to a grand life of joy, pleasure, meaningfulness, or connection.
I am making myself small. But how and in what ways was such a daunting question and not being able to come up with answer left me grasping at straw. In reality, what helped me to reconcile with this was better framed as who. Who did I learn fire from? Who taught me what it means to be creative and to put myself out in the world? Who was teaching me the lessons, explicitly or implicitly?
And so I pose this question back to you? Who did you learn your fire from? And in what ways did you take it to mean?
Thank you for everything, and to everyone who listened to this original stroke of insight. All my love, Jem