“She’s a lot; You’re right.  I am a lot.  With a lot of layers, a lot of personality, a lot of dreams, a lot of ideas, a lot of strategies, a lot of emotions, a lot of love.  So. Yeah.  I’m a lot.” Unknown.  The world needs this reminder right now.  I feel like it’s trite and belabors the point to say anyone who says you’re too much can go away/isn’t for you/doesn’t matter etc.  I’ve never been shy on my stance in regards to self-worth and I have always found it funny that people tend to encourage us to be all we can be until we get to the point of too much—well their definition of too much.  But it is in the farthest reaches of to much, the biggest expansion we can manage that we find who we are.  So how is that we want people to grow and still tell them it’s too much?  Or we tell them they’re doing it wrong?  I struggled (and still struggle) with the idea that we are somehow responsible for meeting other people’s definitions of our lives.  I struggle with it because I fell right into it, I let them drive and I had no idea where the hell they took me for a long time.  I had no idea how to get back.

Humans were never designed to be single dimensional creatures.  If we were, we wouldn’t have the capacity for all the wonders this universe can afford us that we are capable of taking in and making sense of, of creating.  So with that being said, mathematically speaking it doesn’t even begin to make sense that we all need to be the same.   And by that logic, it makes no sense that any human on this planet would be the one to determine what too much/too little/too anything is.  The fact of the matter is we have a lot of emotion in a little container, a powerhouse of energy brimming with potential.  We are like siphons, channeling that energy into something productive.  So why would we want to produce the same things? And why would we presume to listen to someone be critical over us when it’s likely they don’t have the ability to do what we do?  I work with some people who get angry when you help them with something and then angry when you don’t, they want explicit instruction on something but when you give it to them it’s micromanaging—and that is the way of humans in this world.  We have the capacity for infinite … anything…and here we are trying to lord that power over each other. 

I want to be a lot—there’s a lot to do here.  There’s a lot to experience.  There’s a lot to feel.  There’s a lot of places to go.  In order to do those things, I need to be a lot.  I need to know who I am and I need to be clear in those expectations and the path I’m following.  Believe me I learned that first hand from years of NOT doing it. It took me a long time to realize the audience will change its view of you depending on who is in it.  We make each other think we have to somehow perform for each other, that we need to be what the other person wants.  The reality is there is no stage.  If we were honest, I’m not entirely sure the world could handle that, but if we are at least honest with ourselves, we can get closer to the truth.  We can learn to embrace the too much.  We can embrace the entire thing.  I don’t want to reach the end of my life and say I lived small.  Because shrinking takes away not only from the experience of who we are but the experience of what the world can really get from you.  We are meant to taste this life.  To feel it.  We need to be big enough to take a bite out of it.  So let them say you’re a lot.  Chances are they want to be a lot too and they haven’t figured it out yet.  And when someone says you’re a lot, simply say, “Thank you” smile and move on.