Special talents and the whole not enough/too much thing

I have a special talent. It’s seeing other people’s magic. It works OK when they can see it or at least sense it in themselves. It’s not so great if they can’t see it or if I want it more than they do. If I want their magic to be out in the world more than do. It took me so long to not feel apologetic about magic being the thing that I wanted to feel and experience, when for me, those moments that everything makes sense I cannot describe any other way except to say it feels like magic.

I didn’t know this was a special talent until recently.

Sometimes I like to claim being tall as one of my special talents, but I’m honestly not sure if that makes a big difference in the world. Except for entertaining people at parties when I’m banging on about it. And you know, we also don’t like to talk about our special talents too much, because that would be all a bit much, but as this is the week of….getting it all out there (because it seems to be something I have trouble doing often she says sarcastically) I just thought I’d get it out there.

This week I got really clear on the fact that although I have paraded the “I’m not enough” belief as my excuse for too many things my life for the most part biggest, greatest, scariest thing has actually been that I AM TOO MUCH. TOTALLY TOO MUCH.

Too loud, too opinionated, too ridiculous, too tall, laughed too loud, was too enthusiastic, totally OTT, dreamt too big, expected too much and was just too much for anyone to handle and so when I wasn’t just being those things unapologetically, I was trying to tone it all down. Which is kind of hard when you have a lot going on and it ‘s part of who you are and what it means to be you. And the problem with that is that you’re stuck in this life that is NOT ENOUGH and no matter how hard you try to make it enough and how busy you are or how many things you do or learn or achieve it still doesn’t feel the way you thought it should feel. And you attract people who find you too much, and find it hard to support your too much-ness because it makes their own questions about themselves boom too loudly in their own not very quiet minds or they try to dull their own magic with drugs or beer or busy-ness in the hope their calling will go away.

Just one little thing. It doesn’t. IT DOESN’T GO AWAY. Not if you have magic in you. And if you have that, I can see it. Just saying. And if I can see it there are other people who can see it too, and they’ll either love that or hate that about themselves, but it doesn’t stop it being real.

This week, with some of my people (and I call them my people because they found me and asked me to work with them, so that makes them my people because something about me and what I believe has resonated with them and they decided at some point or other that we might be a good fit, and I don’t want to sound all evangelical about myself because I do have all this God stuff and religion hangovers and humbleness) we had to have this conversation about the NOT ENOUGH/TOO MUCH THING and I had to tell them that I know they didn’t choose me to tell them they were enough. They chose me to tell them they weren’t too much and that they should BE MORE and WANT MORE and DO MORE and BE EVERYTHING.

And I get how uncomfortable that is because I’ve been there and someone told it to me once and I wondered what it would mean if I stood up and said I wanted more. And when I did, some people fell away (the kind of people who liked to tell me to ‘settle down’) but mostly all the other people fist-bumped me and encouraged me and were simultaneously relieved and excited that I wasn’t going to pretend anymore.

What’s one of your special talents? What would have to happen for you to find out? What would it mean if you used it? Who would you be?