I love Yoga. I have a beautiful friend who teaches an early morning class, and I really wish I could get all my business together so I could attend. Because there’s not an obviously better way to start a day than with purposeful breathing and stretching and all that awesome Hippie goodness. As it happens, school day timing isn’t perfect for this opportunity.
When I try to do Yoga by myself it’s not so good. I creak and I whine and I (occasionally) fall over and I giggle at what appears in that moment to be silliness. For some reason, leaping out of bed and into Warrior 3 is not so great. I don’t manage to bend like I wish I could.
And now. Metaphorical flexion:
I like to think of myself as a flexible human. When things are supposed to go a certain way, I expect them to go that way within reason, but I really believe that I can bend with uncontrollable circumstances. In certain arenas of my tiny life, I’m kind of famous for it. Being bendy, I mean.
But then. Then there are times when I crack in half. When I refuse to flex (because I don’t know how, or because my planned world will shatter and crumble and deteriorate if This One Thing doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to). Sometimes when that happens, I know in the very moment that I’m being a freak. I know that I should just run with it. But sometimes I don’t. Run. Or roll. Or bend. At all. Usually it’s not a choice to crack. When I feel capable of making the choices, the decision is generally To Go With It. To Make It Work. To Flex. But when decisions seem beyond me, I feel that rigidity overtaking my spine and it scares me. Because I have every capacity to behave badly in such inflexibility. I can roll my eyes to a degree painful to witness. I can snark like a champ when I’m making passive-aggressive remarks about people who have dropped their respective balls and therefore made things Not Go Well. I can deliver a well-timed reply that makes everything worse.
Can you just trust me on this?
When I make things worse, they’re really, really worse. Sometimes worst.
And all of that is to illustrate that I really prefer to flex. I always would rather be the one who picks up the dropped balls and makes things work. I love the bending, most of the time. I like being the repairer rather than the destroyer. But when it’s too hard, when I’m too stiff, and I react badly, I know it instantly. The heat rushes to my face. Thoughtless words pour out of my mouth. Edges blur and all I can see in focus is the wrongness of the situation that equals the wrongness of my response.
So here’s what I wish for me and for you: This (crazy) Christmas time, I hope that things go the way we’ve planned them. I hope the gifts we’ve ordered all arrive on time. I hope our tape wrapping paper supply outlasts our box supply. I hope our travels are undeterred by weather or sickness or inconvenience. I hope the recipes turn out perfectly. I hope the happy outweighs the stress. I hope that snow falls when and where it ought. I hope that gladness attends.
But when it doesn’t, I hope we’ve had enough of a stretch that we can bend with it, make it work, make it feel right. Namaste and stuff: My flexibility bows (deep and low) to your own flexibility. Breathe deeply. We’ll make it right.