Do you dream big, or do you keep yourself small? Do you limit yourself and your greatness to fit into the box that has defined you? Maybe you built the box, or maybe others built it for you. Maybe it was built for you when you were a child before you even had an awareness of who your "self" was. Maybe you built it slowly over time, one board at a time, so slowly that you aren't even sure how you ended up in this box. Maybe it was built in one horrifying instant, with the walls so high reaching you can't see the sky or the sun or the birds anymore. Maybe you don't even dare to pull your eyes off the floor of the box, and aren't sure if it reaches the sky or if you could step right over it.
In many ways, I'm living big, huge dreams. I come from a home ruled by mental illness and decades upon decades of shame, secrets, anger, fear. But I'm building a home with love. Security. Laughter. Toys, food, clothes, and play dates. These things aren't the glitz and glamor often associated with dreams, and yet. Once upon a time, these were the biggest dreams I dared dream. Nothing else was more important, nothing else farther out of reach, nothing more important to achieve.
Now I find myself wondering: Do I dream small? Where could I go, if I dared dreamed larger. If I harnessed a thought, an ideal, a "me" that energized me and motivated me and pulled me out of bed? Made me so excited, that I couldn't wait to run up hills, and jump out of bed?
The more I consider these thoughts the more I embrace the idea that the sky is the limit. I'll be 39 years young in a few weeks. In those years I've embraced the ideas of thriving. Of growing beyond the pains I had no part of inflicting.
But. I viewed those pains as burdens to bear. Obstacles to overcome. Experiences to explain. Pieces of me that would always be broken. Something that pushed me accomplish, so I could prove my value. Convince the world that I, in fact, did have value. That I had value, and could add value. In ways I often haven't considered, I've been living my life as an attempt to prove I didn't deserve the events of my youth.
Recently a revolutionary idea has been introduced to my world, that I resisted mightily for a time.
What if all the events in your life, regardless of how painful and horrific, were gifts?
What if they were put there to teach you things? Bring you to a higher place? Grow you into something more?
What if you could dream bigger than the box that has been built around you? What if the box was never really there at all?
What would you dream then?
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