There is an 8mm black and white home movie of me packed away in a falling apart shoebox somewhere in my attic. Two minutes of two-year-old me toddling towards the camera absolutely full of myself. Look at you, little Cindy, staring down the camera like you own this world.
“Don’t get too full of yourself!” comes the warning from a concerned adult standing nearby.
Sigh.
I was at a dear friend’s house for dinner last night, and I was full of thoughts and opinions which I shared with passion and intensity that was ever so possibly heightened by a glass of tequila. And for the rest of the evening and the next morning I was full of something else. Shame.
Was I too full of my thoughts? Did I express my opinions too fully? Too intensely? I’ve been spinning this in my head all day.
At 15, I watch my son fill himself with adolescence and empty himself of me. I watch as he becomes more and more full of himself. And I’m glad.
I want him to explore and push and question and try on and piss me off and piece together the 16, 17, 18-year-old he is on his way to becoming. The baseball player. The high school student. The violist. And beyond that the college student. The graduate. The citizen. The young adult.
I want him to take whatever fits from whatever I’ve offered until now, and then add everything he’s found that is all his. And I want everyone reading this to do the same.
After all, if we’re not full of ourselves, who else should we be full of?
So go. Get full of yourself, then come have a glass of tequila with me and show me all that you are. You are larger and better than you thought. You hold So. Much. Goodness.
Poetry heals. Love wins. (Thank you, Mr. Whitman, for that truth from “Leaves of Grass.”)
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