Pushing my Limits

Recently I had the opportunity to RAGE at someone who willingly and lovingly received it. It was part of an exercise at a workshop I attended 3 weeks ago. So often exercises like this simply do not TRANSLATE when one describes them outside the workshop. But let me simply say this: It was life-changing.

I was SURE I didn’t want to rage. In all my life, I really have never screamed at someone –unless it was in an act or in jest. I was certain, in fact, that I didn’t have it in me to outrageously YELL at someone for a period of time. Well, I did. And I loved it. I was high for days. In fact, my partner and I were in tears by the end of the exercise. He, I’m sure, would say it was life-changing for him as well.

Here’s the deal. I know I have inwardly raged. I have RAILED against someone or the world silently. But I have never let it FLOW. And really, it’s such a strange LIMIT I placed on myself for decades. It’s not that I think everyone should run around screaming at one another. Rather, I think that we should be willing to explore the territory where we think, “Oh no, that’s just too much. I couldn’t do THAT.”

Here’s a poem I shared with my women’s group several months ago. Many of the women couldn’t stand it. They felt it was TOO much. But then after we all sat with it for awhile– and after, in fact, I read it out loud and they all let their bodies MOVE to it, something wonderful happened and they began to embrace the “too muchness” of it.

Dithyramb of a Happy Woman

Anna Swir

Song of excess,
strength, mighty tenderness
pliant ecstasy.
Magnificence
lovingly dancing.

I quiver as a body in rapture,
I quiver as a wing,
I am an explosion,
I overstep myself,
I am a fountain,
I have its resilience.
Excess,
a thousand excesses,
strength,
song of gushing strength.

There are gifts in me,
flowerings of abundance,
curls of light are sobbing,
a flame is foaming, its lofty ripeness
is ripening.
Oceans of glare,
rosy as the palate
of a big mouth in ecstasy.
I am astonished
up to my nostrils, I snort,
a snorting universe of astonishment
inundates me.
I am gulping excess, I am choking with fullness,
I am impossible as reality.

******

I love this idea — “impossible as reality.”

To me, it reads that everything I consider almost impossible–exhibiting emotional extremes or running a marathon or actually articulating clearly in every moment what I think or feel or want — all these things are very real and very possible if I just choose to push past the careful limits I set for myself too long ago.