Im not quite sure I understand things anymore. I mean, I know that my understanding of the world changes all the time as I go through it but lately I feel out of sorts and completely out of my element. There has been too many changes and so many sad things happening around me that I wonder at the world and I wonder if I am living “correctly”.
Life turns on a dime and today, this minute even, could be my final moment on earth. I could croak as I type this stellar blog and you would never read it…
OK, well I’m still alive so I’ll keep going.
My point here isn’t to be depressing or maudalin but more to make a sense of the death and sadness around me. I woman I work with lost her baby when she was more than 5 months along. Another woman I work with found out her 23 year old son was in a terrible car accident in another state. She had to go at least 8 hours before she got to him and found out he was in fact still alive (he is currently doing very well and should make a mostly full recovery) add to that my Grandfather is dying. I am not particularly close to him but he is my last Grandparent. After this I am a Grandchild with no Grandparents. It seems so weird as my entire life I have known my Grandparents. Besides that I feel for my father who has to go through the sadness of losing his father (his mother died many years ago). There is nothing worse than watching someone you love in pain. It breaks your heart because you cannot help them.
So I say to myself, when I see those I love am I loving them enough. Do they know they are loved? Do they know that I love them so much it hurts to think about anything bad happening to them? Its very important to me that they all know this and I wonder if I show it enough? And what is enough really? I hug them, I tell them I love them and miss them when I don’t see them (sometimes I do a happy dance when I see them) but is THAT enough? I suppose it has to be.
All that goes on in life is a constant reminder of how precious it is and how we should live it fully without fear. But how do you get rid of fear? It lives in all of us to some extent and we act out in varying ways to avoid facing it. We pretend its not really fear but something else, we let it swallow us whole and hope for the best or we dig a hole, crawl and cover ourselves up to avoid life and therefore avoid getting hurt. I have done all of these things and all of them suck (pardon the less than poetic word choice) but its SO HARD to avoid fear and its even harder to NOT succumb to it. Its so enticing, they have cookies where fear lives and who doesn’t like a good cookie now and again?
In yoga we call it practice. Because we are always perfecting, always learning, always teaching and the same can be said for life itself. Life is practice, we are practicing to be better people, we are practicing so that when we come back (if you believe in that) you come back better, stronger, smarter. We practice so we have something to do. And not everyone practices, some people hide in their comfy holes and hope no one notices. Some people just don’t care and slog through life thinking that there is nothing else to it. That this is all there is.
I don’t know. I honestly don’t know and I guess that’s part of the practice too.
Dammit.
“…the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
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