What Are You Allowing To Keep You Small?

I love that it's February 29.

I love it because I will always remember today as The Day I Finally! Figured It out.

It being that one elusive Thing that seemed to be missing from my psyche.

That one Thing that would finally turn the last tumbler of life's safe that I have been trying to crack for so very long now.

I don't know how to crack a safe but I do know it's a sensory process and includes the safe-cracker listening for the faint sound of the lock's tumblers falling into place.

But today there was nothing faint about this "tumbler" falling into place.

No, it was a loud, blaring roar!

All the things in my life - my unhappy marriage, my house, my finances, the clutter in general - all these things I have been using - Me, myself and I as we said when we were kids - to keep Me small.

Again, it's been Me all along keeping Me small.

Even right up to the moment I sat down to write this post - I almost blew it. For the title I started to type "What Is Keeping You Small?" But the answer to that is easy.

You!

You are keeping You small.

I knew the more accurate title is as I wrote it.

"What are you ALLOWING to keep you small?"

We think it's the self-absorbed husband or the passive-aggressive mother or the oppressive boss but these are just the things we have brought into our lives to use as tools to keep ourselves small!

I have to say that again:

Whatever it is that consumes your thoughts, angers you, enrages you, defeats you before you have even begun - these things are not the problem. These are your weapons of choice against you. It doesn't matter what you say.

You can say,

"But what about...."

And no matter what follows in that statement, it's still your choice if it keeps you small.

I was out this morning and when I came home, I began telling my husband about the various things that needed tending for the day. He was laying on the bed on his laptop. When I finished, he said nothing. Did not look up from the screen, did not so much as grunt in acknowledgment. When I asked him to at least confirm he heard me, he said,

"I'm five feet away. How would I not hear you?"

Well, of course I took the bait and launched into a diatribe about common decency and civility but now I see. I see so, so clearly now!

He didn't not answer me because he clearly heard me or he is ignorant of common manners. He didn't answer me because he knew I would react and it kept us locked in smallness together.

February 29.

The day I stopped living small.

"Stop acting small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion." - Rumi