Sunday, April 28, 2013

On how to be a giant.

You know how, in Gulliver's Travels, the Lilliputians greet Gulliver by tying him down to the sandy beach with dozens of threads that crisscross his body and twine off little tufts of his hair? And then they crawl all over him, raid his pockets and jab tiny spears into his nose? Small people are always like that.



Yes we're all small. We all have weaknesses. We're all broken. But some of us can't admit it. Instead we get hard, like little rocks, trying to prove how big, strong, and unbreakable we are. And then weirdly our puffy, overblown bigness warps into a quashing gravity field that actually contracts us down into a more compact smallness.

Our need to be more makes us seem less. 

And this is the sad little truth about pushy, controlling, self-centered, abusive people. 

Just think of the people who've hurt you. And not exclusively those who beat you with a chair leg, used you for sex or told you what a worthless little (expletive-of-the-day) you were (everyday for seventeen years). What about those who smile when your heart breaks, sideline you so they can star and boast they're the "best" and "most" yet say not a word when you succeed. 

They're small. And you can see it. 

Despite that they seem enormous, panoramic in full, HD sinkhole-of-a-nose-pore obscenity, that's only because they're pushing themselves right up into your face. If you can get distance, the mental distance that Windexes your mind's eye, you can see them for what they really are.



They're little people who never grew up, never got big, and can't. So they try to make you feel small. 

And the trick to getting them out of your face? Be like Gulliver. Stand up. 







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