The Anniversary

“You do realize your relationship is epic don’t you?”  

I laugh a little and then nod.  Of course I do.  Who wouldn’t? 

I’ve been married for 15 years today. I am 38 years old. Do the math and you’ll see that I got married when I was 23.  To my high school sweetheart.

It’s ridiculously old school except for the fact that I moved 3,000 miles away when I was 18 and have lived in New York City off and on ever since. When I was very young (and married) I would sometimes be embarrassed that I was so young and married to my high school sweetheart in New York City.  I worked at a corporate law firm with a bunch of other young, single people who couldn’t fathom being married, let alone to the same person they dated in high school. I was kind of a freak show. 

But, John and I are both small(ish) town kids that left home as soon as we could and never looked back except when we were looking for each other.  Although we’ve tried on several occasions, we’ve never been as good apart as we are together. Together, we’ve traveled back and forth across the United States four times.  Together, we’ve seen the world, played too much, amassed piles of debt, gotten out of those same piles of debt, tried our hands at film making, screenwriting, acting, white water rafting, mountaineering, and several other enterprises I’d rather not admit to now that I am grown-up. We have been together through the best and worst periods of our personal histories. We have supported each other and stood by helplessly as we watched the other dismantle and re-build her/his life over and over again. We have two children together. 

Our relationship is epic because it is fundamentally flawed. We are a freak show. We’ve never done things in order, we’ve been ridiculously nomadic, made huge mistakes, been overwhelmingly cruel to each other and somehow, against all odds, we have managed to hobble into middle age together, intact and still in love. 

In fact, despite all the crazy, no one has ever been kinder to me.  John, for all his faults, is the truest, sweetest friend I’ve ever known.  He is impossibly positive, unfailingly patient, unbelievably loving.

My relationship with my John is my strongest expression of yoga. Marred by base humanity, it is a constant reminder that a life rooted in patience, diligence, constancy, kindness and a willingness to accept things as they are, is a connected life.

And for me, that’s been the greatest anniversary gift of all.

The Shopping List

New York neighborhoods can be ridiculously convenient. Within five blocks of my apartment is pretty much everything I need. On the ground floor of my building is a grocery store (not just a bodega, but a real, fully stocked grocery store). In fact, the grocery built an “insiders” door that leads from our lobby to the grocery store. If I wanted to, I could grocery shop in my socks. Next to the grocery store is a coffee shop, dry cleaners and a parking garage. Across the street is the entrance to the subway, a police station and a Goodwill donation center. Around the block or down the street in any direction is everything from department stores, to a bakery, a tailors, restaurants, antique shops, gift shops, a salon, a spa, a copy shop, a drug store, a pediatrics, dentist, a doctor's office, an accountant, lawyers, several daycares, a gym, several playgrounds, a weekend farmer’s market, and three different religions to choose from if I am so inclined. It’s all very convenient. 

Except when it’s not. 

Let’s take the grocery store for example.  While it is true that I could shop in my socks, I don’t because the store at the bottom of my stairs is terrible. It’s a big fake out, a candy house for Brooklyn’s Hansels and Gretels. The produce is the worst I’ve ever seen. The veggies bow their heads in shame and sigh in disbelief that their withered, flaccid bodies are still counted among the living. The bananas never ripen. They just go from green to hard while turning a strange color of black/brown that does not look natural. And the prices are stupid high. Shopping there is like being complicit in your own robbery. It’s like saying to a robber “Hey, you know what? Here are my shoes and my coat too.” (which I wouldn't do, because I go down there in my socks of course.)

So, instead of going to the ground floor of our building, we go to the Fairway in Red Hook. For those unfamiliar with Brooklyn, Red Hook sits on the waterfront in “South Brooklyn.”  It is comprised mainly of shipping piers, old civil war era warehouses, industrial buildings and housing projects. It underwent a renaissance during the recent housing boom because Fairway, a local high end grocery store, bought a warehouse on the waterfront and turned it into a grocery store/condo. Shortly after, Red Hook became hip. Artists and yuppies started snatching up cheap housing and store fronts, converting them into deluxe condos, artist’s lofts and trendy boutiques. Then Ikea moved in. Once that happened, Red Hook’s place among the hearts and minds of gentrifying New Yorkers was firmly set. Red Hook is classic White Brooklyn; equal parts seedy and chic with a mix of extremely poor and affluent mingling uneasily together and relying heavily on its two vital organs: Fairway and Ikea. 

So we, being true and dutiful White Brooklyners, go there every week. This is not as quick and simple as it sounds because Red Hook is incredibly inconvenient to get to. It’s not within walking distance, it’s not on a train line, the bus is slow and inconsistent, you can bike (weather permitting), take a cab, or you have to drive there.

We drive.

To get an idea of what it’s like to drive to Red Hook do this; choose a grocery store roughly 30 minutes away from your house. Now, call a friend and ask her if you can come pick up your car that's parked at her house. Wait about 15 minutes for her to call you back and let you know that you can now go get your car. Drive down a series of narrow, potholed roads that you have to “share with” (a.k.a. dodge out of the way of) huge, aggressive semis, delivery vans and empty tour buses. Go there every week with your five year old and two year old, get the food and then drive back to your friend’s house. Give her your keys and while she waits, go into her garage, find a wagon and load up all your groceries on the wagon. Wheel the wagon one block to your house while your five year old and two year old climb all over it, squishing the food and yelling “go faster!” and “I wanted to be in front this time!” Unload the groceries as fast as you can so nothing melts or gets salmonella and then pile your kids back into the wagon and walk it back to your friend’s garage. 

Sounds fun right?

Add to this the fact that I am gathering up the weekly rations of tan, kid friendly food week after week. I’m not a foodie and thankfully no one at my house has special dietary needs. I don’t like to cook so I tend to stick to the “eat a lot of veggies, no red meat” diet. Anything more challenging then that is simply beyond me. I also have two very picky eaters. They balk at attempts to tempt their boring kid palates and I am not creative enough try something new and unexpected to tempt them. As long as they don’t starve, they aren’t obese, their teeth don’t rot, they are growing properly and they don’t get gout, I’ve done my job. 

So why, with standards as low as mine, would I bother going all the way to Red Hook? Because the Red Hook Fairway is kind of fun and I am the mother of two small kids. Translation; I gotta get my kicks where I can. 

The Fairway in Red Hook built a little walkway around one side that curves around the pier and looks out over the harbor. Tugboats and huge tanker ships glide by and you can see the Statue of Liberty off in the distance. At the end of the pier there are these rusted out 1950’s trolley cars that Fairway sort of claimed as their own. I think they were abandoned there by the MTA a million years ago, but rather than cart them away, Fairway propped up a few metal barriers and called it good.  The boys love them. Across the street in the spring and summer, “Captain Dave,” a nice, kinda weird, middle-aged man with fantasies of being a circus performer/sailor, parks his barge.  He opens his “Barge Museum” a couple days a week and he and his family host an amateur circus act in the summer. The New York Water Taxi stops at Fairway and along the opposite pier, in turn of the century shipping warehouses, rows of artists have taken up residency. Every firehouse in the area shops at Fairway so no matter what time of day or what day of the week we go there is always a fire truck parked out front and a dozen or so firemen wandering around the store. To a kid, this is the equivalent of a super hero sighting. The store itself is set up like all grocery stores; you are forced to walk through every aisle to get to the end, but they funnel you through the “fancy” prepared foods and cheeses, seafood and health food sections first which means you get to fill up on free samples and a really good look at the lobster tank before going through the rest of the store.

We’ve created a ritual around grocery shopping. Upon parking we have The Talk. What is expected of us, how we’re to behave and what we get if we behave (usually dinner at the café in the store).  Then we go to the barge, say “hi” to Captain Dave, take a walk around the pier and look longingly at the trolley cars.  Then we go into the store.  At each section of the store there is a ritual.  The boys always pick out a veggie or fruit for themselves and weigh it.  Then carry it around with them.  They always get a piece of bread at the fancy olive oil display then go over and look at the lobsters and find the one with a “big butt!” Midway through the store, if they’ve been able to contain themselves, we park our cart and order linch from the café. Then we go to the trolley cars again. If it’s too cold, we sit inside and watch the water taxi and tug boats cruise around the harbor. After lunch we go through frozen foods and, with fingertips numb, we go through the check out where the cashier gives each boy a string of “PAID” stickers that they proudly slap onto their hands, foreheads and hair.

Grocery shopping takes me about four hours.

I don’t really have four hours to go grocery shopping. On most days the whole thing is absolutely maddening and it takes all my patience not to turn into Grendel’s Mother. But, I feel like this ridiculously overblown shopping experience is important. My children and I are participating in a ritual. We’re going through the process of cultivating patience, self control and respect.  It helps us to organize and structure our lives right now. It gives us boundaries and allows us to practice skills we all need. Plus, it can be fun. And really, what is the difference between a routine and a ritual? A routine is just some mundane thing you do every day/week/month that gets you by.  I looked it up on Wikipedia (because I love Wikipedia) and the one of the definitions it gave was priceless: “Ritual is an outsider's or "etic" category for a set activity (or set of actions) which to the outsider seems irrational, non-contiguous, or illogical.” That pretty much sums up grocery shopping at my house!

In yoga one of the things we most often stress is the importance of creating a regular practice.  In order to find any true benefit from something we must first go through the ritual of creating a routine.  And I do mean ritual.  It is one thing to show up to the mat or the gym or your job each week and go through the motions, it is quite another to show up and observe what’s actually going on for you.  Practicing yoga is a mini representation of practicing participation in our own lives.  We can either choose to zombie through it or we can actively engage in it, warts and all, in ways that offer us the potential for joy. Note I said potential, not “it will bring you joy.” Rituals do not always inflate our hearts with joy. They simply point us towards options that make what is necessary connected to something beyond mundane existence. The process of living can be either mundane or actively engaging but the potential for joy is greatly enhanced by the latter.  It may never manifest itself at all, but at least the door of possibility is open.  

Creating a ritual around grocery shopping has not removed the annoyance of grocery shopping, but it has added value beyond collecting and consuming. Irrational, non-contiguous, or illogical as it may seem, this weekly enterprise has its inherent value in it predictability, its routine and it’s inconvenience.

Now, if only I could find something equally as interesting about scrubbing the toilets...

The Puppies

My life has always been uterine. I’m one of three sisters, my closest friends are women, and even my favorite pet was a female Siamese cat.  I went to a private college that, up until about five years before I got there, had been all women so most of the men were either gay, in theater or both.  My entire professional life I have always had a female boss. My current business is me, working for the most part with women, managing a staff of primarily women. I have always been surrounded by women and I am grateful for it.  I love women.  I think we’re the best kind of people. We are pretty and soft and have boobs (and let’s be honest here, boobs really are one of the greatest things Nature ever created).  We’re emotional and we like to talk about it.  We want to know what you are feeling and we want to talk to you about it. We are supportive and compassionate and like things like shopping and manicures, and shoes, and cooking shows and we have Oprah.

Now, I know not all women are pretty or awesome or have great boobs and not all women like shoes and Oprah's no saint.  I know we can’t lump an entire sex into one category and say it’s universal. I know women can be completely ruthless, catty and selfish, back stabbing, annoying bitches.  I know.  But all the same, I am very confident in my conviction that we’re amazing. And so, I’m just going to leave it at that.

My dad tried three times to have a boy and struck out all three times.  To add insult to injury, we were “girly” girls. We were stuffed animals, dolls, unicorns, puffy stickers and rainbows.  We took ballet, dressed up as butterflies and fairies, dreamed of being princesses, lived for glitter and couldn’t wait to wear make-up. I was so girly, two boys in my neighborhood got in a fight about who was going to marry me because I was the only girl they knew who wore dresses. My younger sister was the closest he got to a tom boy and her idea of “not girly” was wearing soft pants and making messy art projects.        

And no matter how much he loved us, not having a boy was disappointing for him. He was never punitive about the fact that he didn’t get his heir, but he was completely honest about that fact that he wanted a boy and was bummed not to have one.  This seemed totally close-minded to me. Couldn’t he see how awesome and fun we are?  So what if we didn’t want to go fishing or hunting.  Hunting and fishing is cruel and gross. Why couldn’t he appreciate how sensitive and open-minded we were making him? Why couldn’t he just get over himself, get more in touch with his emotions?   

It’s because he was a guy.  He didn’t always want to do girl things.  He wanted to do guy things.  He wanted to be in a world that he enjoyed with someone whom he could share it with.  Before I had kids I would have taken his reason as sexist or unfair.  But, now I have two children of my own and both of them are boys.  I, the most girly of girls, have two loud, spastic, vehicular obsessed, mess making, testosterone wielding, penises running around my house.

I have a lot of sympathy for my dad. 

Living in a house full of the opposite sex in many ways puts you on the fringe. You’re in it, but not always connected to it.  For me, there are days when I am not even sure if my sons are boys because they act more like puppies. When they are excited they chew things. Literally chew things. They pick up their lovies and bite into them and shake their heads. Like puppies. They yelp and holler when they are excited. We have to get them out at least once, but preferably twice, a day because if we don’t there will be an accident. If we don’t run them around at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon, they can’t go to sleep and will literally tear the house apart. They like to take my shoes out of the closet and either throw them around or hide them. My older son likes to put his face in my bum and give me a “zerbert.”  The other day, when I gave in and told him that, yes I would buy him canned whip cream, he was so excited he backed his bum up to me and rubbed it on me. He rubbed his bum on me. They wiggle when they are excited, have control over their feet only half the time and seem to have a limitless threshold for pain. Just the other day my younger son ran head first into the side of a wooden chair, smacked his temple hard, looked at me, shook his head and kept right on running.

It’s like learning a new language and at the same time trying to teach a foreigner yours. My attempts at crafts, cooking projects and anything non-car related are generally tolerated, sometimes enjoyed, but never really loved. My sons plod through them because they are curious, want to be near me and love me, but their hearts are and minds are always just a Hot Wheel away from leaving me.

It reminds me of my dad’s attempts to include me and my sisters in his world. Once he took us “logging.” Every fall he would drive out into the woods, find a still standing, but dead tree, cut it down and then cut it into logs for our fireplaces.  One year he decided to take us with him.  He made us wait by his truck while he went to search for a tree. While he was gone we began to do what we always did - make up a fantasy. We imagined that he got lost and then snatched up by woodland trolls. Moments later we heard the chainsaw and then a tree falling and decided that, oh no! the tree must have fallen on him! He’s dead! What are we going to do out here in the woods with all these woodland trolls? We started crying and screaming out “Dad, where are you? Are you OK?” He was gone maybe twenty minutes. He’d left three perfectly normal daughters, completely in charge of their own faculties and returned twenty minutes later to find three blubbering idiots, clutching at him, hugging him and dramatically proclaiming how relieved we were that he was still alive. 

I remember the look of confusion and frustration on his face as he said “Of course I'm all right! I told you I would be right back. What’s the matter?”

He wanted to share with us the joy he got from being in the woods and working with his hands. We wanted to live in Narnia. This is not to say we didn’t appreciate being with our dad, we just didn’t appreciate it the way he did. 

This is something I would not have understood before the boys. Before the boys, whenever I heard  the question “why aren’t more men practicing yoga?” my reaction was “Who cares? If they’re too dumb to see how great yoga is, then forget them!” 

But now I get why men don’t like to practice yoga. Many of my teacher trainees use their husbands and boyfriends to practice teaching and most of then will report back that their significant other is doing it simply to please her. He isn’t really into it. Sometimes the guy will be outright belligerent and pick a fight with her, telling her things like “will you just tell me what it is I am supposed to be doing? What am I trying to achieve here?” When my students come back with these reports the general consensus is that the men are being pig-headed and need to just learn how to “let go” of that need to achieve. If they’d only just keep practicing, they'd eventually get it. 

I don’t agree. I think the teacher is being pig-headed. Men may not want to practice the way women do, but they don’t need to get over themselves. The teacher does. One of my students said her husband wanted direction. He wanted to know what he was working for. To her that flies in the face of everything she values about her practice and she didn’t want to give him what he needs. Consequently, he doesn’t want to practice. He thinks yoga is for girls.

So it begs the question, which is more important; your yoga or his?

It’s important to teach a class that suits the student, even if that student is a man who wants a rigorous, goal oriented one. The fact that someone has a different idea of what he wants out of his yoga is not good or bad, it simply is what it is. It’s the teacher’s job to find a way to make the yoga meet the yogi, not the other way around.   

Of course there are butchy girls and effeminate boys.  Not every girl wants to play with dolls and not every boy wants to build race tracks. But, if we don’t acknowledge that we’re not alike we miss out on seeing the great things about each other and maybe even miss out on meeting each other all together.

Instead of trying to make the other be like me, we need to accept that we are different and celebrate it. Do I think it’s totally nuts that my kid’s idea of a joke is to shove his face in my bum and blow a zerbert? Yes. It’s weird. No matter how much I love that kid, I am never gonna accept that as a joke.  

But hey, at least he’s house trained.

I mean potty trained.

The Lost Holiday

So where to begin? First off let me say I’ve always hated New Year’s resolutions and the year end wrap-ups (as evidenced by the fact that I am not getting this up until January 2^nd at the very earliest). Everything has a countdown: the 10 best songs, the 100 best movies, haircuts, ugliest dresses, best and worst baby names, the biggest events, etc. etc. and everyone is supposed to promise to be and do better than they are.

I don’t like wrap-ups and resolutions because it implies that somehow who you are and how you do things is so flawed you need to “fix it,” which is a recipe for disaster.  Making lists of all the bests and worsts of anything is pretty much saying the same thing.  And I’m utterly useless at both.  Follow-through has never been my strong suit (as evidenced by the fact that I am getting this up by January 2^nd at the earliest) and self reflection is a glass so muddled I don’t even think a case of Windex could get that girl clean.    

So I’m not going to do it now.  All I am going to say is this; you are fine the way you are.  You want to exercise more? Do it right now. Don’t do it for next year or for your reunion or wedding, just be in your day to day and stretch yourself out because right now is as good a time as any to do it.  

 I had a student this past training who said “I’m going to get a t-shirt made for myself that says ‘Discipline.  Because really, what the hell else am I gonna do’?”  And really that’s it.  If I were to offer up any resolution suggestions for the year (which I am not, because this is going up after the fact anyway)  it would be this: Dude, you are fine, just stick with it.

And the only 2010 wrap-up I'm gonna offer is an important lesson I've learned this year: Everything is a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Stupidly simple I know, but not really.  Admitting that everything is imperfect flies in the face of my most beloved belief that someday I will find one answer. That what I’m doing is right in some universal way.  It’s been very hard to come to terms with the fact that there isn’t a lightening rod or that what I am doing isn’t an end unto itself but a process. 

And it’s been even harder to accept that this process comes with both good and bad.  That no matter what I choose it comes with what I didn’t choose.  Within every choice there is sacrifice and loss.  Sometimes the loss will be freely given, sometimes it’s mourned, but regardless, there is loss.  If we don’t acknowledge that loss, we suffer.  (Note I said “acknowledge” the loss.  This is not the same thing as focusing on it. I simply mean acknowledging that it exists in the first place.)   

Take the holidays. Until this year I have been an unapologetic Scrooge. I dread the holidays.  If you’d asked me before this year I would have said “because it’s all about money! Consume, consume, consume! It’s just this American excuse to rob everyone blind.”  But that’s not it.  The fact is I’ve always dreaded Christmas because I love it.  I’ve always loved it.  I love sitting down with my family for a big meal, the smell of the tree, the lights, the music, the cookies, the sweet simplicity of the Nativity story, the goofiness of Santa living at the top of the world with his band a merry little elves. Seriously, what’s not to love?  

Christmas in and of itself isn't flawed, but the fact that I wanted a Perfect Christmas is.  I wanted the claymation TV specials, department store window displays, commercials, and movie Christmas.  I wanted the horse-drawn sleigh to take me through the snow to the grandma's chalet in the woods where friends and family sit around the hearth singing. I wanted birds tying bows in my princess hair with sweetness, sprinkles, stars, sunshine, flowers and sparkles. 

But real-time Christmas has always been fraught with real-time problems and base humanity.  First there were the normal mishaps; the time my sisters and I almost set the house on fire playing with candles, the time we almost died in our sleep because my dad accidentally put smoldering embers in a plastic garbage bin, the time the dog ate an entire Pyrex dish of fudge – Pyrex and all.  Then there was the fact that my family was poor, and of course there was the fact that Christmas brought out the spooky in my dad.  As I got older the holidays were ear-marked by adult concerns; finding the funds for my own Christmas gifts, hurt feelings over gifts, over words, over a relative/boyfriend/spouse having to work, and of course the inevitable Huge Family Fight. All of which ruined my Perfect Christmas.  And because it was “never” what it “should” be, I sequestered Christmas to the part of my heart reserved for cleaning toilets. 

And yet, my love never really died. As I continued to insist that the holidays were ass, I was squirreling away a little bit of hope each year that this year I would get it right.  And the vicious cycle continued.

Of course Christmas is just one example of reaching for simple, neat solutions to shield myself from the pain of loss.  Moving away from home is another example.  Before this year, every time we’d go to Spokane I would be dismissive of it.  Not because I genuinely hated it, but because I loved it and didn’t know how to mourn the loss.  I have learned that there is no one right choice.  Moving back to New York has taught me this.  When we left California I was sad to leave my family. Living so far away from them is hard.  But, I love living in New York.  My life here is good.  But, it comes with loss. Likewise, if we’d stayed there would have been loss. And that’s the point.  Stay = loss.  Go = loss.  Before I would have tried to vilify the other to buoy the current, but when I do that I don’t offer space for sadness and that shuts me off from love which moves me even further away from friends, family and authentic experiences.

Plus, it doesn’t give me room to breathe. And I like breathing.

As per usual, the holidays this year were fraught with depressing moments of frustration. I was very happy to see the backside of them.  Likewise, I still feel a constant homesick and pine for some perfect balance between "here" and "there" where I can have it all. But, after a year of sitting with my discomfort, of allowing it to be a little bit of this and a little bit of that, when that wave of "this is the worst thing ever" comes over me I have found a kind of peace.  By just allowing it to be crappy, by trusting that crappy is as transitory as happy, I have found more peace in this one year than I have in twenty years of vilifying denial.

Plus, I breathe so much easier.  And I like breathing.  It's the one thing I intend to do more of this year.

Favorite Buddha Quote

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.

The Inner Child

I attended a class awhile back where the teacher was talking about addiction in relation to the gunas. In yoga there are three states of being, or “gunas”: sattva, rajas, and tamas.  Sattva is purity, rajas is dim and tamas is dark. 

His hypothesis was that in order for someone to become addicted to something it has to be an acquired thing, that in our most sattvik state, we do not indulge in behaviors that make our souls dim or dark. Only when we are in a rajasik or tamasik state do we do things that are bad for us.  

He then went on to say “I mean you only have to look at kids to know what is good for you. It’s not that hard. Kids, well kids are pure right? They will always tell you if something is good or bad for you. You give a kid scotch and what do you think they will do? They will wrinkle their noses and spit it out, right?” 

Ah yes, the eternal “purity of children” speech. How many yoga classes have I been in where the teacher uses the impulsiveness of children as an example of our “true and blissful” state or, better yet, the lack of impulse control as an example of what we “should” do? Postulating that children intrinsically know good from bad/right from wrong because they are pure of heart is a trite idea. Believing that the only reason we adults make harmful choices  is because we had the audacity to grow up, to become tainted by our environment, time, experiences is, at it's most banal, absurdly simplistic. At it's most egregious, it is emotionally damaging and manipulative.  

First of all, no matter how adorable and fun kids are, they do not have that “pure” filter people fantasize about. Leave a bunch of kids to fend for themselves for a period of time and I promise you it will be way more Lord of the Flies then Never, Never Land. Being a kid is not simple. It’s hard. Every day is an organizational mess. It’s a constant struggle of learning new tools, impulse control, of being dependent upon, yet wanting to be independent of those who protect them. Their emotional lives make the Real Housewives look like a Zen masters.  They spend all their time trying to understand the world around them and learn new things all the while being frustrated by the constant stream of “no’s” and “don’t do that’s” and “be careful’s.” Sure, they appreciate the small things, they play with abandon, think the world is their oyster, but not because they are more spiritually realized than adults.  They do so because someone has their backs. A happy, healthy child is not an abandoned or neglected one.  A happy, healthy child has someone watching over him, taking care of his needs, helping him navigate the world.   

And this is not to say “Hey what about us grown-ups? Let’s give a shout out to the real hero here!” but merely to say that childhood is not an end unto itself. It is not something we are supposed to sustain or better yet, aspire to. Childhood is necessarily transient. It’s a tipping off point. The place where we get the tools we will use to go into the world and either support or destroy it. 

Second of all, when someone says “be more childlike” most often they aren’t fantasizing about the perfection of childhood, but rather cloaking sanctimoniousness.  Telling an alcoholic that “a kid will tell you that stuff is crap” separates those without suffering as “good" people who know better, from those who suffer as “bad" people who don’t. Even a little kid knows that stuff isn’t good for you. Why don’t you?

Suffering does not mean someone is good or bad, or lazy or stupid. It means he suffers. When we condemn pain as so simplistic that even a child could do better, what we are really saying is “be like me” or “do things my way.” There is no progress in that.  It only creates shame. 

But, shame is powerful.  It’s the Alpha Male of the emotional manipulation pack. Shame makes people feel dirty, worthless and awful.  They will do anything to avoid having it bear down on them. It creates fear. And fear begets obedience. People will follow the rules of the shamer implicitly.  The shamer, full of conviction and authority, has power to either validate or invalidate everyone around him.

The only problem is, no matter how much power shame wields, it doesn’t support authentic healing. Blind obedience out of fear of recrimination isn’t the same thing as someone saying “I do not want this in my life anymore. I choose a different path."

It’s hard to see human suffering.  It makes us uncomfortable.  It’s confusing and often disorienting. We’re confronted with our own limitations and our own lack of suffering. We’re intensely grateful not to be suffering, maybe even feel a little guilty that we’re not suffering. This may make us desperate to do something to make the uncomfortable situation go away. It’s so much harder to say “This pain you are carrying is terrible. This pain is confusing. But, this pain is not you. It’s not your punishment. It's not your fate. Let’s sit together and see if this faith, this practice, this place, this medication, etc. can help in some way alleviate your suffering.”  So instead we offer up easy answers wrapped up in greeting card slogans.

Sadly, the remedies to suffering often aren’t very easy. Simple in nature maybe, but in practice? Not so much. Barring fundamental injustices like lack of clean water, food, shelter, clothing and medical care, most causes of suffering are complexly human. They are a combination of life experiences, physical limitations, economic restrictions, genetics, etc. The remedies are going to be as varied as the people suffering.  The “correct” action is not just one thing, but a collection of tools and supplies tailored to meet the person’s needs. 

It’s like a house.  A newer house is going to need different attention then an older one.  If you want to strip and repaint the interior of a new home, you just get the supplies and do it. But, in an old home you have to take precautions. You have to seal off the room, wear specially designed protective gear and be meticulous about clean up after. In the end both homes get a new coat of paint but how they get it is very different.  

Rather than glorify one state of being, i.e. childhood, as something we need to sustain, or tell each other that we aren’t “doing it right” because the cure we found that worked so well for us isn’t producing the same results for someone else, why not create for grown-ups what we strive to do for our kids: safe, nurturing environments where we are free to explore, question and be ourselves.  

When we encourage each other and remain open to different ideas, we create environments where the healing goes from a promise to a possibility. And it's that possibility of being that lays the foundation for genuine, authentic change. It's that possibility that eases suffering. It may not always be the right fit, but it's active and participatory. It allows you to affect your own being, to remain flexible and interested in your own life. 

So, you take care of your house. Choose tools, materials and contractors that prop you up and make you the strongest, healthiest and most structurally sound person you can be within the framework you've got. 

Timing is Everything

I grew up in Spokane Washington. I really like it there. In many ways Spokane is perfect. It’s a combination between a desert and a forest; nice and woodsy, but dry. It’s small, but not too small, and pretty. The people are very, very nice. One of my best friends lives there. It’s a great place to raise kids. It’s relatively safe with lots of open space to roam free. The weather is temperate so even though the winters tend to be long and cold, the summers never stay too hot for too long and there is zero humidity. There are tons of outdoor activities. It’s a smallish city with a nice community feel and fairly well supported art scene. It is a very nice place to live.

So why don’t I live there? Because, I don’t fit in. Spokane, for all its benefits, is not my place. For as long as I can remember I was out of place in my hometown. I had vastly different political views, have never really enjoyed outdoor activities and I am always, always cold. When I was young, headstrong and outspoken I would rail against Spokane, calling it a conservative hick town, with little or no culture, blah, blah, blah - the kind of stuff you say when you’re desperately insecure and need to feel superior. But now I know that there isn’t anything more or less wrong with Spokane than there is with any other place in the world.

Yogis continually talk about being “present.” It is one of those elusive ideas that often gets translated as “accept the hand your dealt” or “find the silver lining in this crummy situation.” I am not a fan of this translation. I don’t believe anyone should accept a resignation in life. If your situation is out of hand, acceptance doesn't make it less so. It’s only by understanding who you are and how you work that you will get closer to touching Truth. Without this component, without understanding the landscape of your mind, you will always feel torn and confused. Yoga brings us closer to our authentic self not by teaching us how to resign ourselves to crummy situations, but by teaching us how to quiet the noise of constant recrimination and need. Once that happens we can hear and understand Truth and act accordingly.

Take my family's move to a California suburb for example. One of the nicest things about city living is the parks. Parks are communal property. In a place where very few of us have anything that resembles a yard, we go to parks to air out our kids. It’s a collective experience and a nice, neutralizing place. You go, have a brief chat, crack a few jokes and move on. Sometimes you meet people you really like and want to get to know more and sometimes you suffer the fool, but either way Park Time is interactive time.

This is not true in the suburbs. Suburban parks are largely viewed as extensions of people’s yards. As such, cross communication is kept to a minimum. Parents bring their children and toys to the park and expect to be left alone. They rarely want to talk and more often than not spend the bulk of their time either on their phones or avoiding eye contact with other adults.

In the city it is widely accepted that if you bring toys to the park they are going to be played with by all the other kids in the park. Not so in the suburbs. When we’d go to the playground my son would march up to some kid and say “Hi, my name is Jack. Do you want to be my friend?” which means “Hi, what have you got there? I am going to touch it now.” This did not translate into Suburban. In the city, when the child with the toy starts to protest, the parents usually say something like “Now Billy, remember it’s nice to share.” But in the suburbs, the parents would shoot us a look that said “Bring your own toys to the park you mongrels!” Then they would scoop up their kid and stuff and leave.

It was, among many, a sign that we were not in the right place for us.

As our year yawned on, our disillusionment with suburban life grew. Eventually a series of events gave us the opportunity to leave California. We spent many nights making lists. Weighing the pros and cons, discussing the options, obsessing over where we’d go next. The option of moving back to New York was on the list but it was fraught with problems. It’s far away. Our families would be mad. It was expensive. The economy is bad. How it would affect the kids. John asked me “will moving back make you happy?”

I threw up my hands and said “I don’t know! Probably not. But I still think we should do it!”

Then I remembered one of the most often quoted texts from the Bhaghavad Gita;

  “Better to do one’s own duty imperfectly

    than to do another man’s well;

    doing action intrinsic to his being

    a man avoids guilt.” (8:47)

In the Gita, Arjuna, a soldier on the precipice of a battle, is holding council with Lord Krishna. Arjuna is having a crisis of faith. When he looks across the battle field he sees his cousins and knows that if he participates in this war, he is going to have to kill them. He doesn’t want to do this. He is about to walk away from battle, but Krishna counsels him otherwise. He says;


   “If you fail to wage this war
    of scared duty,
    you will abandon your own duty
    and fame will only gain evil.
    People will tell
   of your undying shame,
   and for a man of honor
   shame is worse than death.

   The great chariot warriors will think
   you deserted in fear of battle;
   you will be despised by those you esteem.

   Your enemies will slander you,
   scorning your skill in so many unspeakable ways –
   could any suffering be worse?” (2:33 – 36)

Essentially what he is saying is “Snap out of it! You think this war is going to stop because you choose not to fight? You think this battle isn’t going to happen without you? The only person who suffers from your lack of participation is you. Your people will turn their backs on you, your soldiers will say you abandoned them; the other side will call you a wimp. How is that better than doing what you are meant to do?”

Harsh words from God. Because the setting is war, the Gita is often misunderstood as a pro-war treatise, which it’s not. The backdrop of war is neither here nor there, the story could take place in an open air market and the lesson would still be the same. It’s just that backdrop of war is nice and dramatic. It helps to illustrate how mightily we have to struggle against our inclination to give up and walk away versus hunker down and fight our battles. It is a parable on the work we all must do.

Whether it is parenting, teaching, deep contemplation or carpentry, the work is the thing not the worker. Winning or the losing the battle is immaterial. Arjuna is a soldier. Therefore, he must fight. He must participate in his life. Whether he lives or dies doesn’t matter. Whether he fights well or poorly doesn’t matter. What matters is that he participates in his life.

This is probably one of the hardest concepts for me to wrap my mind around. Being an American I was trained to believe that life should be easy. I am entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes from consuming things that will make it possible for me to do as little work as possible, right? The concept that work, whether it is done spectacularly or mediocre, is a path to liberation is completely foreign to me.

And yet, here I am in this self-created tumultuous life. We relocated back to New York in the spring. I started my own little yoga biz. Additionally I manage an on-line database. My husband started his own business and is going back to school. Together we’re raising two small humans. My children are young, my business is young, my husband’s business is young and, for all intents and purposes, we are old. We are starting over when most people have settled down. Every day feels like a race against the clock. The clock is ticking, ticking, ticking it never stops ticking! And each day my children get taller, wiser and older. And every day I think “Hey pay attention! You are missing this!”

But in between those moments of doubt, worry and insanity are these wonderful ones where, for the first time in a long time, I am in step with my own rhythms. I am completely absorbed in what I am doing. My life is working at my pace. I am in the right place for me. I tried to make my life what thought I “should” live. I tried to convince myself that someone else’s life was the one I wanted, but I was miserable. So, here I am in a kooky life that defies common sense.

And I feel better.

Doing your dharma isn’t about finding bliss or being perpetually happy. Practicing presence of mind isn't about rolling over and accepting whatever comes your way as a cruel twist of fate. It’s about doing the work. It’s about learning the landscape of your mind and sticking with it when it’s awkward and hard and sucks. It's about being present so that you can monitor and then moderate your reactions and interactions and maintain equanimity. It's not finding the bright side of a bad situation or accepting that you are meant to suffer in some cosmic way, but accepting that you are in the driver's seat of your own mind.

And deciding that the route you choose to take is ultimately up to you.