I Felt Tall

We’re going to get a little philosophical here on the blog today, but I hope you will indulge me.

I had a strange experience as I was walking around the trail this past week. I was walking along, minding my own business, and I suddenly realized that I felt tall. Literally. My legs seemed longer, my torso lengthened, my head seemed higher. At 5’5″, I’m not exactly short, but still. I felt tall.

The sensation was so disorienting that I almost stumbled. I became afraid, the way you do when you look down from a greater height than you’d anticipated and feel like you might fall. I even got a little queasy. My sense of perspective shifted. I realized that I felt like I was in proportion with my surroundings. Suddenly the ground seemed a proper distance away. My head seemed to be in its proper place on my shoulders.

I kept walking. It occurred to me that if I thought it was unusual to feel tall and in proportion with my surroundings, then normally I felt short and out of proportion.

I kept walking. Then it occurred to me that, at that moment, I didn’t feel trapped.

As I work towards making changes in my life, I’ve been coming to the understanding that everything shifts and moves. This can be stressful, but the fact that everything changes means that I am not trapped in my current state. I can always change too. Maybe feeling a little freer made me feel a little taller. Maybe that’s why I felt in proportion, as if I fit into my surroundings instead of being dwarfed by them. I don’t know.

Whether you celebrate Easter or Passover or not, I hope you’ll agree that Spring is the season of renewal. When I felt tall, I felt renewed. I felt like I could have walked forever.

Then I went back into the office building. As is often the case with normal life, I soon felt short again. But I remember what it was like to feel tall, even if it was only for a little while. And maybe that’s the best we can do – we experience the renewal, then we remember the experience.

Whatever. It was good.