Make Space; Take Space

 Ok, so here is how it's going to go today. We are going to talk about two seemingly related concepts, make space, and take space. We are going to talk about them individually first, and then bring it all together at the end. What is the point, you ask? Well you will have to take this bumpy ride of thoughts with me. So fasten your seatbelts, and as my kid says, come on let's go. 

Make space

Ever since I was a child, I was good at making space. I am almost tempted to say it came to me naturally, but I think it had a lot to do with my upbringing. I grew up in a typical Indian household. We were 6 people, me and my brother, my parents, and my grandparents on my father’s side. During vacations, my father’s elder brother and his family would come and stay with us. My father’s sister moved a few houses away from us when I was pretty young, becoming my mother’s brother and his family’s next door neighbor. I hope you get the gist. I grew up in a swarm of relatives, people connected by blood living a stone’s throw away. I was always taught to share. Whether it was my bed when my cousins came over, my clothes, my space, my food. And I used to do it easily. I was always able to make space for people. I would give up my own seat for someone else to have it. 

When I grew up, whenever I was in a group setting, especially in school or at work, I somehow felt as if it was my responsibility to make space for others, especially people who would not speak unless spoken to. I remember in 2021, when I started work after my maternity leave, I was asked to put together a team from scratch that I was expected to lead. This was peak covid times, people had been working from home for 9 months now, and no end was in sight. I had never led a team that size before, and never remotely. Somehow being in the same physical space made connecting with people more natural and organic. But here I was, responsible to make strangers connect together (I strongly believe that when the members in the team connect on a deeper level, the overall team strengthens and does better), strangers who had never shared a physical space together, who I had never seen before. I was rusty from my leave, and quite unsure of myself too. There wasn’t a single person in that team who I had worked with before. So, I started this meeting, every other Friday, at 4 PM, called “The Serendipity hour”. There was only one rule, no work talk. People were allowed to join in when they wanted, drop off when they liked, and maybe even skip it altogether if they wanted to. It was supposed to be one hour of an open call, where we just talk about ourselves and get to know each other better. The first few calls went as you would expect them to. Most people did not join, the few that did hesitated tremendously before unmuting themselves. But I really wanted it to work. So I started coming up with these themes. When we would start the call, I would ask people simple questions, like what would they be if not the career that they are pursuing right now, or what's their favorite childhood memory and why, or what is their death meal, the one last meal they would want to have before dying. And then we went around the zoom giving everyone a chance to answer. Since these calls were unstructured, what usually happened was one person’s answer would strike a chord with another one, and they would want to share something on that topic. It allowed people to connect very organically, very naturally, over shared interest, and helped them know each other better. And looking back, it was my way of making space for everyone in that team, especially the ones who would otherwise be very quiet. 

Another fun incident that comes to my mind. Days before my wedding, we had lots and lots of guests who came over for the wedding. In India, it is pretty common for relatives, especially older ones, to come over and stay and help with the wedding preparation at least a week in advance. We had so many people over that we ran out of places to sleep, so I slept with my parents, at 23 years old, about to get married, for at least a week. And not for once I thought there was anything odd about it. That was what I was taught ever since I was a child, you have to make space for people, even when sometimes it means that you have to give up on your own and get uncomfortable. This is the behavior that was modeled by my parents and grandparents too. Make space.

Take space

While making space for others was fairly easy for me, taking space for myself was incredibly challenging. It still is a bit challenging, for example I am feeling bothered by how long this write up is getting, bothered by how much space it is taking, but I am actively working on it.

Some of my best teachers are the people who look up to me for guidance. I know, it sounds counterintuitive. If I am supposed to guide them, how are they going to teach me? But in their questions, I find the opportunity to look at the challenges that I myself face through an impartial, impersonal lens, and find the solutions logically, rationally.  One such incident happened very recently, about 6 months ago.

One of my reportees mentioned in my 1:1 with her how she is afraid that her growth might end up meaning stepping on other people’s toes. And she is more comfortable holding herself back and being careful, than hurting others. When she shared this with me I didn’t really know how to respond. It took me a minute, but somehow, in that moment, wisdom dawned upon me, thanks to her for putting me in that spot. I drew a box on the table, and told her, I need you to make a mindset shift. Right now, you think that this box is the scope of growth. Then I drew a few circles within it. And I said, you feel like if this circle is you, and you expand it, there is less space for others to expand their circles now. You are afraid to take space because that may mean less space for others. But what if we just throw this box out. Let's get a new box. The good thing about this box is, it grows with you. When you expand, the box expands too. So, as you grow, you do take up more space, but you don’t take anyone else’s space. There’s enough room for all of us to grow; together. And she got it. Over the next few months, I had the privilege to have the front row seats to see her transform. She quite literally stepped out of her cocoon and spread her wings. She took her space. A space she rightfully deserved. A space she had earned by her hard work. 

Cut to a couple of days ago. I was talking to a few friends about one of the challenges I recently faced with one of the kids, and how I handled it etc, and as I always do, I ended up following it with an analogy. And my other friend interrupted me to say how amazed she is by my ability to come up with such relatable analogies in real time, and how it helps her understand complex thoughts with so much ease. And while I thanked her, I thought back to the time when I hated the fact that I can’t understand or explain something without an analogy. It's funny, but I almost feel incapable of registering concepts, unless I can think of a real world analogy. In my mind, it's as if, if this does not happen in nature, then it's unnatural, and flawed, and hence cannot be accepted as a concept. I don’t know if that is right or wrong, and I am not about to debate on it either. Fortunately or unfortunately, that's just how my mind works. I love it now, I feel like it gives me an edge, and I am able to remember things better simply because there is a real life example I can relate it to, but growing up, I never liked it. And the only reason was, it made me take thrice as much space. So let's say we are talking about something, and I want to tell you what I have learned. If I just stick to the concept, I can finish it quickly. But if I tell you the concept, then the analogy, and then bring it back and tie it to the concept, I end up taking thrice as long. And I just never felt comfortable taking that much space. 

Being the deep thinker that I am (yep, I am going with deep thinker, and not overthinker, because I don’t need to ridicule my ability to think anymore), I have thought about this multiple times. Why do I feel so uncomfortable with taking up space? Why do I feel like I need to apologize for the length of my message, for the length of my words, for my body, for my being? Some of the credit can go to the consistent message I got as a young female to “Skrink, shrink, shrink”. For the longest time, I believed that the smaller I am, the better. But I have been able to almost unlearn that part. And yet, I continue to feel uncomfortable with taking space. 

Cut to yesterday. I was listening to this wonderful podcast by Brene Brown where she talks to Simon Sinek about his new book, the Infinite Game. Full disclosure, I haven’t read the book yet. I plan to, but we will see when that happens. Simon and Brene gave me the vocabulary for what I have been missing all this time. The word I was looking for was “infinite”.

The reason why I continue to feel uncomfortable with taking space is because all this time, till my reportee put me on the spot, for almost 30 years, I believed that space was finite. If space is finite and you take some of it, it most definitely means someone else cannot take it. But what if, what if space isn’t finite. Fun fact here, the universe actually isn’t finite. Entire galaxies are allowed to take their space, without once thinking that it could mean less space for others, because the universe is growing, creating more and more space (I know I have dumbed it down tremendously and it isn’t that straightforward, but, you get the point). Who am I then, a literal speck of dust, to worry about taking space, when there is more than enough room for all of us. And the best part, the room grows with us. 

I can’t begin to even count everything that I have let go off in the fear that I may take too much space. I have held myself back from expressing in my most authentic voice, because it can be too much, because I can be too much. I have been writing since I was 10, but I almost did not start this blog because I thought I would take space. But it bothers me now, because my kids are growing. And just the thought of them not taking all the space they want in the world breaks my heart. I can’t teach them something I myself don’t live by. And so, here we are, here I am, in my little space on the infinite internet, at the end of our bumpy ride, the seatbelt sign now turned off, to tell you, and to tell myself - Make space; Take space.