Owning Our Wingspan
As a child I tended to be one of the tallest girls of my class. When the nuns at school insisted we walked on a line by height order, I always knew my place was about three spots from the end of the line. I hit puberty too early, so at ten I had almost reached my current, average height of 5’ 5”. Looking older than what I was became the norm. In fact, when I was twelve years-old people assumed my sister and I were twins when in reality she is five years older.
Being naturally shy, I did not like the attention. Adults will comment how much I was growing, as if I had any responsibility on it. So I came out with a solution to my desire to become invisible: slouching. Bending my upper back, moving my neck forward actually made me look a few inches shorter. What I did not anticipate is how that was going to damage my posture. But becoming somewhat invisible seemed more important at the moment. As a consequence, It has taken me so many years of constant workouts and yoga to improve my stance slightly.
As I was scanning old photographs recently, I realized how much older than my friends I looked back then. Seeing it with the perspective that maturity gives, I could not find a reason why did it matter so much then. Why did I try to look smaller then? What did I try to become invisible? Why being higher than my friends did even bothered me?
I don’t think it was a matter of self-confidence, because in fact I had a good dose of self-esteem. I just did not want to stand out. Suddenly it hit me. How many times we try to do that through our lives? How many times we try to look smaller so that we don’t overshadow anybody else? How many times do we know a truth and stay quite to not contradict another person in public? How many times we adopt a shield and take blows in order for someone’s ego to remain intact?
The problem with that learned behavior, is that we get too comfortable limiting ourselves. As if showing some of our talents was enough, as long as we don’t cast shade on anybody else. Hiding does not make us smaller, it actually makes us weaker. It limits our full potential. Many times is not even a systemic programming. We might embrace some of our talents and no others; some of our words but not our voices, so we think we have overcome it. But shame always has a skillful way to sneak in. Research has shown that this behavior is dramatically worst on women. So yes, I have been guilty of charge since a young age.
Could we unlearn that?
The process of owning who we are, including our shadows and our full potential, takes lots of courage and a lot of unlearning. But only by giving permission to ourselves to embrace our wingspan, we can begin to fly. A bird can’t fly with half its wings or half its strength. Why do we pretend we can? It does not matter if someone feels smaller or actually is. By reducing ourselves we are not only committing a great injustice to our souls, we are also limiting somebody else’s capacity to flight. We are bombarded with the idea that by tiptoeing around people’s insecurities we are doing them a favor, when in reality we are aiding them to remain there as small as they want to be.
“But only by giving permission to ourselves to embrace our wingspan, we can begin to fly. ”
After a lot of consideration, I have realized that breaking that trait has nothing to do with our egos wanting to be bigger than anybody else. It is about seeing us with full acknowledgment of who we truly are, without patronizing or glorifying ourselves. There are few things more beautiful than being seen, truly seen when you don’t even have to explain yourself. Guess what? In order to be seen we need to be able to see ourselves first and meet us where we are.
What would happen if we all decide to embrace our potential? The reach will not only be at a personal level but I want to think that it might impact our whole surroundings, our communities. But that implies kicking egos and shame out of the door and welcoming acceptance and compassion.
Sometimes we have to be last in the line for our greatness or lack therefore, sometimes we need to be the vessel that steers our true potential to its destination, and sometimes we need to accept what we got, as little or large as it is. But cheating on ourselves trying to become smaller than who we are does not change our height, only our posture. Let’s embrace what we’ve got, no shame on that, and let’s own our wingspan. We owe that to ourselves.
Just for the record, it only took a couple of years for my friends to catch up and even surpass my height. I am confident that my hunchback years are over. Now it is time to check my wingspan, not only for the sake of reaching my full potential but to set an example to my daughters and to my son. Every great flight begins with an acceptance of our capacity to fly as far and as high as we can and my hope is that they understand that making themselves smaller to fit a mold is never an option. Life, after all, will make us wait in line many times without a need to measure ourselves against anybody, but rather as a limbo line where everyone gets their own dance. And that, it’s the kind of line I like!
