Are You Getting Too Big For Your Britches?

Bazinga!  This will not be about how yoga makes you lose weight, because I don’t believe it necessarily does (see last week’s post on yoga as adaptogen).

I have had more meat on my bones than ever before since I started practicing yoga.  Maybe that’s the yoga; maybe it’s just because I am over 40 and you know what They Say about that.  Dunno.  Anyway, what I am really thinking about this week is comments like:

“Who does she think she is?”  . . . “He’s gotten too big for his britches!” . . .

What makes people say things like this?

When someone thinks just a little too much of herself, it makes the rest of us uncomfortable.  It’s like we are all working under some unspoken compact that we will not change too much or rock the boat.  We will stay small for (our own and) others’ comfort.

Comments like the above act as a sort of cattle prod we (unconsciously?) bust out to keep the herd in line.

Now, I am not saying that nobody ever gets out of line or acts truly arrogant.  They (we) do sometimes.  I am just saying that if we could get a little big for our own britches once in a while, with the understanding and the hope that others, too, might free themselves from the boxes in which they are hiding from their greatness, that might be a good thing.

Why am I writing about this on my yoga blog?  Well, yoga is all about transformation.  When we begin the journey, we really have no idea where it might take us.

But it WILL, almost certainly, take us out of our own comfort zone.  It will show us we can do things we never imagined we could.  And as we stretch (ha!) beyond these confines, we will have to develop a new concept of self.  An expanded concept, which allows for the possibility that we can be, do, and (yes, even) have more than we previously thought possible.  More than other people have come to expect for and of us.

So, have you gotten too big for your britches?  Good.  Get yourself a new pair of britches.