i'm the avatar, and you gotta deal with it!

Too muchness is the dark underbelly of not enough-ness.

All of us together hold an invisible line, a shared sweet spot where we all deep down as a culture and as a people basically agree on what’s okay and what’s not. Fall under that line in your own mind–either in terms of performance or achievement–and the not-enoughness monster (insert your favorite measuring stick) happily emerges to beat you over the head. Work harder, try harder, don’t make mistakes…these are the common refrains you hear in your head as the measuring stick whacks you again and again.

But what happens when we find ourselves over that shared line of what’s okay? What happens when we delve into the shadow-y space called too much? What happens then the measuring stick falls away and we’re out beyond the measured allowances of safety, emotion, expression or thought? Dial it back, reel yourself in, don’t say that out loud, be more careful! are the common refrains in this space as you float like a kite into the ether, a hundred imaginary scissors floating in the air, threatening to cut you off and set you loose so you can fall like Icarus back under the line where we all agree it’s most safe and easiest to belong.

Of course, the worst shaming comes from your very own self. Why can’t I get with the program? Why can’t I be like everyone else? Why am I…

The truth is we’re triggering each other right and left with our not enough-ness and too-muchness. We send each other into hiding with a glance, when underneath we share the most common worry…

Am I worthy of love and belonging exactly as I am?
Who can take me, the all of me? Like this? When I feel in this instance like not enough or too much?
Can you respect me if I do it different than you do?
Can we stick together if the too muchness parts of you scare the shit out of me and make me worried you’ll get hurt? Can we stick together if the scared to be not-enoughness parts of you make me fear you’ll never want to be with me exactly where I most naturally am?

I wonder what happens if we go in the exact opposite direction. What happens if we come clean and say. I don’t feel like I’m enough for you and I wish I were. Or. I feel like I am too much for you and I wish it were not so. What if we said, I want to accept you exactly how you are without judgment and I want to own everything that rises up in me because of that instead of asking you to be more or less.

I am exactly what the doctor ordered and so are you. I will be with you and you can be with me and when it feels like not enough or too much, I will lie down in the green grass until my heart beats slower, because nothing is too much for the earth and nothing is too little. The earth has seen it all and keeps going and she will catch me when I fall and launch me when it’s my time to rise.

Everything is exactly as it should be and the quickest way to change is to accept what is in each moment no matter how the tide ebbs and flows inside.