If I want to get bigger

Really loving these huge Circles.

Gives me a chance to be with my bigotries and prejudices. 

Another reason for me to enjoy multi-cultural, multi-generational relational events. 

Probably the reason I most like working with the “yung-uns”, is that my norms keep getting shown up as “old man preferences/realities”. To work effectively with them, I have to let go of that, no matter what my preferences are telling me.

I like being in a place, a relational space, where it’s NOT about my character being with other characters that agree on not only what “the right and proper dances are” and “this is how they are danced”. 

It’s not about me being Amish going to be with other Amish.

My values are telling me what it means that that person shows up like that.

My values are telling me what it means that they are expressing themselves that way.

My values are telling me what I like to do.

My values are telling me what I don’t like to do.

My values are telling me what I should do.

My values are telling me what I shouldn’t do.

My values, my character are creating a bigoted, prejudicial view of reality.

That’s what they do.

If I want to get bigger than my current character wants me to be, I am doing to have to hold some of those values very lightly.

If I want to get bigger than my current character wants me to be, I am going to have to engage with things, in ways that it doesn’t want me to.

I think it’s within the agreements of Circling to engage in a way that feels inauthentic, if that is what you authentically want to do.

It really helps me to be aware of how unsatisfied I am with what my character brings to relationshipping. 

Why in the hell am I interested in keeping that front and center in my relational dances? I understand that there were a lot of battles fought, a lot of ground reclaimed, a lot of standing up in the face of those who wanted me to sit the fuck down and be quiet about what my truth was. To walk away from what those battles, those struggles, that pain resulted in is not betraying myself. 

I am not doing what was done to me. 

I have not become my perpetrators.
I have not become my oppressors.

I am not doing to myself what was done to me.

I am not doing the things that I swore I would never do.

I am not denying the truth of who I was.
I am not denying the truth of who I am.

I am choosing to not be satisfied with what is.
I am choosing to walk into something new, something that I believe will give me more of what I want in my life.

And I’m sure as hell willing to look stupid, to be clumsy, and to make plenty of mistakes.

Further until there isn’t.