When I was about five years old, I was a horse. Or, at least, I was a girl who had watched a lot of hours of the Erin Go Bragh movie on VHS and lived at the end of a long dirt driveway. Those things, in my mind, were essentially synonymous. I would drag random items (sticks, bits of PVC pipe from God-knows-where) across the driveway, then gallop from the house all the way out to the mailbox and back again, leaping gallantly (I thought) over each obstacle in my path. My parents, for some terrible reason, both enabled this and occasionally videotaped it. Everything they say about only children is true after all.
When we’re young, most of us spend at least a few years in a state of pure, joyful self-centeredness. I’m doing this because I want to do it. Pay attention. Watch me. Or, I’m sad. Stop everything you’re doing and watch me be sad. My sadness is so important.
As someone who is no longer five, I know a few people who are still like this – unabashed in the space they take up (spoiler alert: they’re all men.) But the vast majority of us are far tamer creatures than we were.
I don’t think this is all bad, of course – being a part-time horse wouldn’t get me too far in my professional and social worlds these days. Here’s the thing, though, about our tameness: with it comes a great hesitancy to take up any space at all. In so many realms of our lives, we have been steadily working to make ourselves smaller.
I’m so aware of all the ways I’ve been slowly taught to shrink myself. Some were helpful lessons; listening and thinking before you speak, for example, was not a strong suit for childhood Cleo, and ultimately, I’m a better person for learning to be different. But then there are the other ways: deferring by default to other people, shutting myself up in moments that matter, learning to overanalyze what other people think of what I say and do. These were also taught. Maybe at times they’ve made me easier to be in a room with, or in a meeting with. But have they benefitted me, deeply and spiritually? Were any of these lessons worth learning?
When I think about those unafraid adult spotlight-stealers, one of whom I dated for a couple of years, I’m conflicted in my emotions. On one hand, I remember all the ways in which those people can be inconsiderate. On the other hand, I’m jealous of the world they get to live in: a world where the voice of social etiquette has been turned down to a lower volume and the theme song of unapologetic selfhood is blasting. I’m jealous that they didn’t sit through the same life classes I did, or that if they did, they spent the whole time doodling imaginary worlds to rule.
Self-awareness is a good thing, but we all know what they say about too much of a good thing. Being socialized as a woman taught me so many ways to tone myself down, and so many more ways to constantly worry about whether I’m toned down enough.
There’s no conclusion here, really. I’m just wishing the world had come up with different ways of teaching us to be kind that didn’t involve teaching us to be less visible. I’m imagining what we could have been if we hadn’t learned that it was rude to take up space. Maybe I’m challenging myself to take up a bit more. Maybe I’m hoping you will too.
I love this and hope one day you’ll run down the driveway with abandon again.
I’ll film it. ❤️