Reaching for the sky: 5 Short girl realities

The fact that I am short, was never so much brought to my attention as it did in the past 2 years. We are not tall back home but since living abroad, I think people believe my mom didn’t feed me enough veggies, or that I descend from a goblin family. I should have realized the reason why my head seems to be an arm-rester, is not because others are tall…

BIG-6-men-can-feel-inferior-too

Short girl reality #1: one height does not fit all

When I first arrived in my current rented furnished home (house number… I think 19th), The landlord asked me if there was anything I needed to change. After my first night, I discovered the mirror in the bathroom was useless to me. I replied saying the mirror was too high… never got a response back. Let’s just say I learnt to appreciate my forehead since then, and have found 10 new white hairs… Plus at least I exercise my calfs twice a day!

On an additional note, short people are the ultimate balancers in public transport, since the standing holders are most of the times to high to reach.

Short girl reality #2: one size does not fit all

As much as there is no standard height, there is also no standard size. Having small feet, standard size socks are too big and 2 pairs of socks are necessary to get into the smallest adult size shoe. Standard size pants are too long and standard size shirts are like dresses. Finally, I have experienced that reality check moment when my old flip flops were being used by my 10 year old nephew…

6427bf08d2da687fae341a2c8ce7ca14
This is true…

Short girl reality #3: Stretch your boundaries

Ain’t no shelving high enough, ain’t no table long enough, ain’t no counter wide enough, that keep us from getting where we need to be! We have mutated with the super power of stretching. Short-girls expand their limits, challenge the laws of physics and learn MacGyver tricks to reach impossible heights, which for us is anything above 1,80cm. We jump if we have to, climb where we can, go diagonal and disregard any embarrassment or shame related to owning a kitchen stool. There is no impossible reach!

Short girl reality #4: never ending leg room

Eat your jealousy, tall people. Short people never run out of leg room in airplanes. In fact, we may even find a comfortable position cross legged or hugging our knees and sleep like babies!

20180316_075950
Last week on Easyjet… traveling in style!

Short girl reality #5: tall crowds

I can see some rays of light flying over my head mixed with hands of others. Thankfully, phones have huge screens nowadays, and so it allows me to indirectly see the musicians live from the screens of the audience next to me.

Sometimes I also feel invisible. People may step on me or bump into me because they don’t see me. Therefore, in a concert options are limited. Either I am too far back that I can hardly see the people on stage, or I am close enough that I can only see people’s backs. Short girls in concerts learn to expand their senses and absorb others energy as part of the experience, and unfortunately odor… Occasionally we do have a gentleman who puts us on the shoulders so we too, can fully experience the magic of live music.

short-girl-at-a-concert

Even in cinemas, despite the disposition and inclination of chairs, there is always that person that is 6 foot tall sitting right in front of you. So option 1: risk neck and back injury to be able to see the movie in between the heads of the people in front of you… option 2: use your coat and bag as a pillow to get higher! No shame!

There are many other realities that favor the short. We can take advantage of others umbrellas when raining, any couch is a comfortable wide bed where we can sleep soundly, and people usually assume we are younger than we are (or at least they are being nice). We learn to adapt and reach where others think impossible. Jump higher, stretch taller and climb further. Being short makes us giants!

“It is what it is” series 1: mastering the fall

I’ve been falling all my life. Always in unexpected places, on flat surfaces, and in awkward ways. Many have confessed to feel embarrassed when associated to my person when I awkwardly lose my balance on the street. But there are some valuable lessons from being unbalanced on flat surfaces….

The calming life by the sea, with the boats swinging in the wind have brought me into a calm mindset every time I set foot out of my temporary house when I arrived in Wales 1 year ago. I was happily walking around the marina one morning and feeling energised by my new surroundings, when I noticed a bike shop. In a very personal impulsive way, I swiftly changed direction towards it. Not that I am a biker, or intended to buy one just yet… Then, 3 meters from the entry, this invisible chain was connecting only two small pillars amongst 10 unconnected ones. I stepped confidently forward and suddenly I see the sky disappearing from my eyes and metamorphosing into red bricks and textured gray concrete. Elbow and knee meet the ground in one perfect slow motion fall… and blank.

it-takes-skill-to-trip-over-flat-surfaces-5601869

I entered the shop not deviating my route after the event, and the owner looks in awe at me after witnessing this most amazing fall… I believe that was the first time I heard it is what it is in this country, this dreadful sentence that would mark so many more awkward moments the year ahead. Let’s just say I had a bruised elbow (dor de cotovelo as we say in Portugal) for the next month and a half.

Just as much as burro velho não aprende línguas, or literally translated, old donkey doesn’t learn languages (how I love the nonsense of literal translations), the sentence “it is what it is” is the perfect example of an excuse to not change what you can. You may not avoid a fall, but you can totally manage how to react to it, because it is what it is, until it isn’t!
How to master the art of falling in 3 steps:

1. If you have to fall, do it gracefully: Those who have witnessed, more than I like to admit, these countless (un)expected moments, have said I fall in slow motion. Somehow I will unconsciously predict it will happen a few moments just before it does, almost like a muscle memory resulted my long experience mastering the art of the fall. If you have to fall, react quickly, do it calmly, and embrace gravity for the natural law it represents, even if it doesn’t feel like that when you are in mid air.

2. Get support: When you fall, the slow motion effect will assist in getting support. Avoid falling face flat on the floor. The only time your face interacts with the floor is upon seeing it coming dangerously close. It is ok to show you are human in the moment of the fall, as terror will run through your veins and you will most likely show a deformed expression mirroring your immediate unbalanced existence. However, your existence is the one of a warrior, so fall on your knee and elbow / hand. Fall as it was meant to be and conquer the floor. The pain will be sharp but you will not feel it just yet. Accept it is natural and inevitable, which brings me to the most important part: the cliché – it doesn’t matter how you fall, but how you get up!

3. Get up in a single motion: Never stay down for long. With the same speed and calm you fell, get up in a single movement. Almost like break dancer, make three synchronized movements that end with you standing tall with feet on the floor. The expression on your face must also transform into normality again. You will be a bit bruised, and so will your ego, but a small period of temporary amnesia will help you get through the initial shock and social embarrassment, allowing the pain to build only in your body. Then laugh it out to disguise the pain, and carry on reacting as if nothing happened. Others with you, may feel as embarrassed as you are, so it is in a way a social sharing experience.

fed1b239b5256992d116404cd7fb4abdbaa69137_m

One year ago “It is what it is” quickly passed through the bike shop into the work place. Everyone at work uses it to justify the events resulted from running a complex and fun operation where every day is different and the unexpected happens. Despite the healing and comfortable benefits this sentence brings to ones acceptance of surrounding circumstances, it is what it is… until it isn’t, and won’t settle for anything less. The unexpected never truly is!

Ego logic bosses

Mere peasants, who succumb all their resources to the Master of the Land. We deprive our children from their daily basic needs, we steal from our neighbors, we hide our precious goods in camouflaged wholes in the ground where we plant beautiful trees to disguise these resources, all to fill in the masters pantry just a little bit more.

You shall never suggest the master how to organize their pantry, you must give him subtle hints so the master absorbs those into his “own” ideas. If you ever dare to bluntly change course of action without permission of the master, you must face the wrath and the fire piercing out of his eyes, and being marked for life.

excellent-smithers-release-the-hounds

Ego Logic: the one’s inflated Ego absolute argumentative reason

I’m sure all of us have experienced such Ego Logic bosses. I define it as the belief that despite reason, common sense and/or factual proof, one’s own ideas / arguments must be perceived as the right ones. This is broken down in 3 parts:
1. The Core dynamic: The need of feeling complete ownership of ideas / arguments is so strong, that ego logic boss narcissism will emerge to transform his thoughts in absolute reason that others are expected to understand, accept and praise.
2. The Creator Complex: Ideas / actions must always emerge from the Ego owner. If ever these ideas come from another party despite having concrete proof, facts and arguments, the Ego owner will classify them as wrong and will override them with some strange logic and distorted truth.
3. Insecure Apathy: There is an apparent absence of comprehending the impact certain actions have on others. The Ego logic boss must at all times feel in control of all that is happening, because his own insecurity does not accept others to take independent actions unless authorized and supervised. Their sense of security seems to feed of the others insecurity and the need to feel superior.

Why people suffer from Ego Logic? I really don’t know. And they don’t know it or ever admit it either, I am sure. So you can only assume by what you observe. However I have encountered and experienced living in the “shadow” of such bosses.

funny-quotes-Deja-Poo.jpg

Mr. Charles was the first. A grumpy old human, proudly showing his round belly with a cigarette in his mouth, the 40th of the day at 1pm in the afternoon. His skin was 15 years aged and burnt. Even his glasses were stained by the tobacco. Grotesque little man, lost some precious brain cells to nicotine, which greatly affected his judgment (when the habit of smoking was not even left aside when putting gasoline on a boat…). Mr. Charles sailing skills, left many praying and valuing life a little more and his inconsideration for all the inferior humans around him was legendary. No skills for customer service, business, management or life for all that matters. Speaking with him was a dreadful task I was fortunate enough to endure only for a couple of months on rare occasions. I learnt to cut these moments short by agreeing and pretending to have some urgent task to attend to.

Mr. Nando, a man whose logic defied the smartest of the business man. Team meetings would last an hour, with no clear agenda, no clear message or goal and with words that were wrongly translated from a foreign language no one would understand. Yet you would never dare to seek clarification of his logic, for the 1 hour could quickly turn into a long 3 hour dinner about nothing at all. Mr. Nando would go around a subject until you were dizzy, hypnotize you until time seems to stop. These 3 hours would feel like days. He was void, lost in his own world which he attempt to bring out to manage his business. The success of the “big company” was of course, attributed to his “guidance” (or should I say, to the teams own undercover way of executing without his knowledge). We would be but grateful if Nando would grant us permission to bring something that would fill his own pockets, because his “fair to everyone” was wise and almighty. Long live Mr. Nando!

maxresdefault

So many I know suffer under the management of Ego Logic bosses. Strategy is key to deal with these bosses. I will come back to this topic in a near future, but for now, your end goal must be the one with the least loss of personal energy. These people are provided with a black hole capable of draining the energy of the strongest of the stars. Best strategy is to avoid its orbit, or escape… even though confrontation is unavoidable.

I am so grateful and lucky to have now a boss that is completely the opposite.

Life is better upside-down

I have always envy ice skating gymnasts. To my naive young dreamy child eyes, they represented the ultimate freedom. Ruthless, strong and mesmerizing humanoid forms who swiftly cut the ice and levitate with a grace that elevates them to some sort of godly state.

I could not have been further from this ideal… No levitation, no godly state, cutting only my fingers in clumsiness when trying to cook and reaching humanoid status by having some alien life logic. Regarding sports, let’s just say I was never the athletic type…

While growing up, gym classes were a sacrifice I had to endure. My poor classmates dreaded picking me for their teams as much as I did dribbling… or should I say tripping, a football into this square space. It made no sense to me, and I hated the competition. I stood alone on many occasions, stubbornly manifesting my disscontempt, or sharing the goals keeper net with another school gym striker, before magically disappearing into the school cafe. With time, I became an escape artist.

Charlie_Brown_Lucy_Moves_Football-1LG.jpg

5 years ago I discovered freediving, and at the same time yoga came into my life. These are the perfect sports for my slightly introvert self. Both of them are personal mind games that literally make you jump head first. Here is why I love them:

1. Being under-pressure

In Freediving, self-sabotage is directly correlated with poor performance. Mind and body must become one. Trust is key! On the surface, breathing techniques calm your body and mind and help you slowly focus on something easy. You cannot start a dive tired or overthinking. Then the duck dive needs to be done in a single flow movement that gets you to 5 meters deep with the minimal effort. Afterwards, you synchronize the swim with your heart beat and ear decompression at a slow rhythm. No need to rush, rush wastes energy.

After 15 meters deep, your lungs are less than half the volume. No more natural positive buoyancy. Pressure takes over and you slide down motionless. At this point you feel your body transforming. At 20 meters, your lungs are 1\3 of the size and your stomach is glued to your back. You need to build reserve air to decompress your ears. At 30 meters, your lungs are at 1/4th of the size, you are close to your residual air lung volume. Instincts kick in. Then you feel the compressions. Your diaphragm is pressuring your lungs to recycle your air. Your body is triggering your brain to scream for air. Blood leaves your legs to protect your heart and brain. You need to control the impulse to panic, to control fear. . . you may feel living a sort of a dream and no it’s not the eternal one! Compressions are fine. They are the trigger to turn up slowly. They form a sort of a loop where mind triggers your body to make you believe you need air sooner than you actually need. Mind over body and time is extended. You are in total control at the same time you are letting go. Very paradoxical feeling in freediving.

(it is not me in that video… not yet!)

2. Balancing out:

Turning now to yoga and handstands in particular, I do not do it to find some soul enlightenment and mindfulness zen state. I do it because I love the challenge, and to observe how my thoughts affect my practice. Parallel to freediving, overthinking is an enemy of handstands and any yoga balance. My first handstand felt like a log. I was struggling to balance on my neck (should be on my shoulders), my face was in lobster mode, I could feel blood pounding in my eyes… I thought my head was going to explode. I lost balance and slowly fell to the side, in slow motion but brutal fall on the ground. Not very graceful… Yet, that feeling of being upside down was addictive, and I haven’t stopped since.

hand-stand-kitten

So what is so special about being upside-down? Is it the illusion of control, power and the humility that comes with it… Is it feeling unbalanced and learn how to remain whole or is it the growth pains felt when faced with adversity. Perhaps is about solving puzzles, celebrating small victories, having the freedom that comes with expanding your comfort zone. Whatever it is, all of the above or none of them, I’m addicted.

How I miss freediving and the being under pressure… for now, handstands have to do it. As I like to stay, 1 handstand a day, keeps the doctor away.