L is for Little

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” -e.e. cummings

Act I

The CEO took charge of the retreat after lunch, pushing his staff into action teams to create a brochure, a potluck, and a video.

I watched my business partner, David, from across the room, wondering what he kept making notes of as the CEO spoke. Every few sentences, David would write something on a small notepad he held in his left hand. Note. Speak, speak, speak. Note. Speak, speak, speak. Note.

Finally, at the break, I walked to where David sat. “What on earth are you making note of every little bit? I asked. “I’m watching you from across the room and can’t figure out what’s so interesting.”

“I’m counting,” David replied. “I’m counting the number of times he says the word ‘little’ in reference to the work we did with this team over the past two days. Listen for it after the break.”

I wasn’t sure what David meant, but after the break, it became clear. “And so,” the CEO began, “we’re going to take what we learned in that little exercise and apply it to our work on the strategic plan.” Then a few minutes later, “remember that little exercise we did yesterday morning about perception?” And later still, “let’s don’t forget that little film we saw last night.”

Little, little, little. Not consciously, but all the more important because it wasn’t.

We reduce ourselves—and others—in so very many ways.

Act II

We presented a mask workshop one evening a few years ago for a community of engaged and ready learners. It was magical to watch what happened in a few hours—we learned about the masks we wear (and why), and saw what happens when we delve into deeper mask work to create new worlds in silent relationship. Magical, meaningful, deep—people in the room (ourselves included) were transported. It held great insight and great promise. As we walked into the reception afterward, the “buzz” about the session had preceded us, the evaluations had already been read. “Well,” one of the sponsors said, “I heard your little session went well.”

Little, little, little.

Act III

“When people ask you what you do,” David said to me a few months ago at a planning retreat he and I took in the hills of New Mexico, "why don’t you ever say that you’re a writer?"

“Because I’m not a writer,” I told David, “not really.”

“And how many books and articles have you published?” he asked with a sly smile and a knowing look. “Exactly what would it take for you to consider yourself a writer?”

I’m not often speechless. I fought the urge to defend and explain and stammer in the anger that often comes with revelation, and just sat with his question instead.

We drove to Santa Fe a few days later for wandering and lusting after wood opal rings and spending time with a magical man named Robin. When I had given a guest lecture on storytelling the summer before, Robin had been in the class and even in the short time I was there, I immediately wanted to know him and be friends with him, a magnetic, incredible spirit of a human, with openness and glow that I rarely see. As we sat at lunch that day in Santa Fe, Robin asked The Question: "So tell me, Patti, other than storytelling, what kinds of things do you do?"

David’s look pierced my defense mechanisms. “I’m a writer,” I said, smiling broadly, confident that I had fulfilled the challenge. “And what do you write?” Robin asked.

I hadn’t prepared for follow-up questions, much like the time my mother bought me an interview outfit as I finished graduate school and we didn’t plan for what I would wear to a second interview.

“I write little essays every Monday,” I quickly replied.

Little.

Reduce. Reduce. Reduce.

David busted me on that, too. “Why do you call your essays ‘little’?” he asked later.

Why, indeed. I’ve stopped myself innumerable times since then, busting myself on using the word “little” to diminish what I do in the world.

We deflect and reduce in so many ways: with laughter, with language, with “little.” We learn—sometimes in childhood and certainly later—to diminish the bright light we bring into the world, to make it smaller, to hide it, put a shade on it—for many reasons—to raise others up, to avoid comparison, to minimize the fall when we fail, to protect and explain and rationalize and, it seems, to cover.

We don’t come into the world that way. “Are you a writer?” I heard Mr Brilliant ask Tess before dinner tonight, having read the draft of this essay. “YES! I’M A WRITER! I WROTE TWO BIG BOOKS!” she screamed, handing him two folded pieces of paper with drawings and letters on them.

Picasso once said, “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”  We’re good at reducing. What are our strategies for enlarging, expanding, growing into, being big in the world?, I wonder.

[Art from here.]