So…have you lost your shit lately?
…I mean, not that I have…
…certainly not…
…I’m a yoga teacher. Cool as a cucumber at all times… (How well does sarcasm come through in blogging?) *grin*
You guys. I was legitimately driving to teach yoga last night, yelling at people like a crazy person from the inside of my car. …Are you sure you want the wool lifted from your eyes? The following story illustrates one of the many ways I am actually just an average human being…
The kids and I got back from gymnastics just before 6pm; Mike had started dinner and I took over so he could mow the lawn (which was so overgrown, by the way, that the kids decided to have a “grass fight” with all the clumps). I finish dinner while putting final touches on my music for class later; the fam eats together; Mike finishes the lawn while the kids continue to turn green outside from playing in the trimmings. I have an hour before I leave, so I clean up dinner and vacuum the house (super unlike me, but the grass is EVERYWHERE). ComEd calls and says the power will be out between 7 and 9 for maintenance on our street. Crap. Now it’s almost 7 and my green-tinted children need a shower before the lights turn out. I hurry them inside and am washing their hair when it goes dark…thank goodness for the window in the room. Shoot, I have to leave in 10 minutes and I need to get ready by the light of a phone flashlight! I scurry around, kiss my loves, and leave a couple minutes after I wanted to.
Have I accurately set up the busy feeling of my evening?
As I’m driving, I am behind someone who has to turn. Y’all, they must have had a 3-layered cake on a pedestal in there or something; I have never seen someone turn with such care! I was so wrapped up in my need to get to the studio quickly that I began yelling into the air – what are they doing, making me go slower? Interrupting my commute? Slowing me down?? …Being this far removed from the situation in both time and emotion makes it even more ludicrous to witness. (Insert a palm-to-forehead emoji here.)
Fortunately, I was eventually able to separate myself from my ego (that’d be the one reacting and yelling into thin air at a complete stranger) and realize that this other human being was doing nothing to me. Amazingly, they were simply going about their own life, rightfully unaware of my urgency and schedule. (What an enlightening though, amiright?) It’s so easy to get lost in the idea that what happens around us is all about us and our experience. But in reality, external occurrences are simply that – external. They don’t determine our reactions or our perception of things. It’s the space between what happens outside of us and what happens within us where the magical opportunities occur.
Situations like this one are just the ‘boiling water’ of life. You are not the boiling water. You are either a potato or an egg (stay with me). When you drop a potato and an egg into boiling water, what happens? The potato softens but the egg hardens. Same water. Different outcomes. If you aren’t sure, I was definitely an egg yesterday; I was unaccepting of the circumstances and chose to push up against what was going on, trying to exert some control over what I obviously couldn’t control at that point. A more sane approach would be to soften to what is happening; accept what is as the external reality and then choose to breathe deeply. When you create space between what’s happening outside of you and your reaction to it, you’ll begin to live more consciously and thus more peacefully and happily.
So the next time you find yourself in boiling water, I challenge you to find a breath’s space between the situation and your reaction. Even if you still harden and argue with reality, at least you’ll be aware of your reaction, and that’s a great place to start. Be conscious that you’re an egg. And maybe…just maybe…you’ll eventually soften into a potato. 😉
Love. Always.
Linds
