A twelve year-old girl walks up to her grandfather’s casket at the cemetery. She leans over and whispers:
“Your life was the biggest.”
She’s crying, this character on the TV series, and I’m crying, too.
Her grandfather had worked at a factory. He had three kids. When he got laid off, he opened up a bicycle shop.
That was it. A life which, by his own judgement, hadn’t amounted to much.
But his granddaughter saw something else.
Your life was the biggest.
At first, I thought what moved me was the cliche. That’s what I want people to say about me in my eulogy.
But that’s not it. It’s something else.
“Your life was the biggest.”
The way she says it, I know it’s true.
His life was full. Rich. Complete. The biggest it could possibly be.
That’s what hit me so hard.
Lately I’ve been seeing just how much I still hold myself back from bigness. Not the external bigness measured in houses and bank accounts and cars and vacations and pretty things. Or even the bigness of projects, clients, and creative output.
I mean the fullness of being myself.
The ridiculousness. The intensity. The moodiness. The over-the-top dragon-ness of being me with the dial turned up to 11.
Where every thing is allowed and every feeling is felt, even the resistance.
The bigness of being. Me.
Hearing those words feels less like a eulogy and more like life whispering them directly to me:
Your life is the biggest.
Already. Without changing anything.
Maybe the only thing that hides the fullness of our lives is the thought that they should look different than they do.
Yours in love and play,
Steph 🐲❤️
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