What If It Doesn’t Turn Out Like You Thought?
I love pesto! When making pesto, each batch is always a little different but is always tasty. Being willing to be surprised by the results of your actions is also a good way to live your life.
When Waiting is Weighty
Lately I've been in a lot of waiting rooms with two loved ones who are having some health issues. Waiting rooms are anxious spaces where my mind rather easily tries to fill the "empty" space of waiting with unhelpful stories about what “could” happen. Waiting like this is very weighty. The good news is there is another way - a way to weightlessly wait.
Nobody is Perfect
During the introspective season of Lent, we come face to face with our mistakes. As we do, it can be tempting to decide that we stink at being good people. Yoga offers a gentle view of mistakes. They are simply invitations to keep practicing - informed but unencumbered by our earlier mistakes.
Why Do I Keep Doing That?
Is there something you hate doing, yet somehow find yourself doing it again and again? Like grooves on a record, habits keep us singing the same old song. With practice we can smooth away these habits to free ourselves to sing any song we want. Creating new habits is not a quick-fix. In fact, it can take a lifetime. In the wise words of Glennon Doyle, “luckily a lifetime is exactly how long we have.”
Winning Isn’t Everything – Far From It
Playing Scrabble with my grandmother taught me that playing – and playing well - is fun whether or not you win. Which is good news because it took me 10 years to win! Looking back, I see that, as sweet as that long-awaited win was, the sweetness of that victory pales in comparison to all the time my grandmother and I spent together noodling around with letters and words. Every game we played, I learned. Every time we sat down, I got a little better. The practice was more meaningful, it turns out, than the results.
The Headline is Rarely the Whole Story
Part of a ringing in a new year can involve looking back on the year that is drawing to a close. It can be easy to judge a year as "good" or "bad" based only on one or two events that dominates your memory of the year. To do so would be to focus only on the "headline" and to miss out on all of the fine print that makes up your life. Perhaps a practice of "reading" beyond the headline of your days in 2025 can set the tone for a new year that is richer and broader than just its headline.
Change is Inevitable. Resistance is Futile.
I find myself surprised as I count my blessings this Thanksgiving to feel grateful for the many unasked-for changes that have defined my life recently. Change is coming, whether we like it or not. That is not meant to be a threat, but a statement of the nature of life. When we are able to set aside the very human temptation to resist unasked-for change, we open ourselves to the promise of becoming - which is something to be thankful for indeed.
Life Has Better Plans Than You and I Do
It's fairly easy to let go of control and allow life to go as it will go when everything's going great as it was for me on a recent pretty-perfect fall getaway. It turns out this is much harder to do when things aren't going at all the way you'd hoped they'd go.
Forward by Another Way
As much as we’d like to, we do not have control over the direction that our lives will take. Often, what keeps us from freely flowing where life is taking us is our instance that things should be another way. Once we accepted that this - whatever this is - is the way we’re going, we might find that getting off the “main road” offers some amazing views that we would have missed otherwise.