There are so many challenges
we experience in our lives.
Some seem small
and some seem big.
But the interesting thing is
the small ones might be big to someone else,
and the big ones might be small to someone else.
The local sparrow
would not care one bit
about a stock market crash.
And yet
the grocery trip I so easily take for granted
occurs while the sparrow is scrounging for a single seed
in the winter wonderland around me.
Big and small are relative.
I feel small when I can’t see any options
or is it that when I feel small it prevents me from seeing?
Every time a challenge seems big,
I cannot face it until I can also become big enough to match it.
The size of my being grows with each new challenge.
Knowing my enormity creates my resiliency.
Any parts of me that feel small become truly decimated
with each passing day
especially when the pressure is on
and I am seen and held in love.
And something so interesting
happens in this process.
I make space
within my enormity
for the innocent child that I am
and always have been.
In a sense,
my bigness
is here to take care of my tenderness.
I am a we.
We are showing up in collaboration
to bring the strength and the heart
the power and the virtue
the grit and the smile.
We are I, and I am we.
The tenderness likes to float to the top,
always.
To be ever-present, peering out as if in the crow’s nest
with a telescope
navigating the adventure
atop a gigantic amassment of power.
A cauldron of unbending will,
furious in its waves of eternity.
Drilling like an oil rig
ever deeper
into the well of all that is
seemingly all for the sake of little ol’ me
having absolute agency
in a world convinced that it doesn’t exist.
And that I can’t exist as I see myself.
Such a paradox brings
a sense of knowingness
even if no one else can see it or sense it.
And the bigness required
to be with it alone
may be the biggest challenge.
To see the we
in what could otherwise be a simple sense of smallness.
