Anything That Doesn’t Bring You Alive Is Too Small for You
It’s easy to mask biases as preferences. Calling them by fancy names or associating them with trending phenomena. But none of that stops them from quietly polluting our everyday choices and value judgments.
They keep compelling us to repeat old patterns, to return to places we once wanted to escape, to seek validations that never truly served us. More dangerously, they lead us back to the same choices that brought pain in the past.
The truth is, if our biases were so right, life would have been far less painful. Our hearts would be fuller with joy, and our minds lighter, with fewer grudges and complaints, and more gratitude.
Yes, some biases serve a purpose. They offer speed, quicker choices. They often protect us from pitfalls. But beyond that, they cage us inside experiences we’ve already had, and keep us from reaching for new ones.
In a way, they are the opposite of our core instinct: curiosity. The very thing that urges us to explore the new and unknown. They stop us from seeking the adventures we’re meant to have. They steal away new possibilities of joy in the name of protecting past comforts, leaving us with a life of safety, but no excitement.
David Whyte writes in his poem Sweet Darkness:
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
“Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”
So why stop ourselves from being more? Why choose comfort over the adventure we’re offered? Why not be free of our own shackles?
Why not meet people who seem different from us? Why not give that weird thought a chance? Why not imagine a reality beyond what we’ve known? Why not love something we were told not to love? Why not, for once, try… pineapple on pizza?
Who knows? Maybe, it’s nice.