It’s graduation season
Because I teach mostly college seniors, the spring semester provides me a front-row seat to the emotional roller coaster that leads up to the culmination of their 16 years of studies – graduation. Threaded through widespread “senioritis,” I glimpse exhaustion, exultation, anxiety, relief, giddiness, and wistfulness.
These are all completely fitting reactions to the ending that is looming large for the four months that we spend together. As far as these emotions are concerned, the yoga philosophy I teach essentially suggests that they put on their seat belts and ride the ride. Emotions like the ones they are feeling are meant to be felt.
Rather than shoving the uncomfortable ones aside or clinging desperately to the positive ones, we talk over and over again about emotions as windows to more self-awareness and understanding. Feeling exhausted? Notice that. Then take a look at where you might need to make some changes in how you’re investing your energy. Feeling exultant? Same deal. Notice it. You might learn something about what fulfills or motivates you.
You really don’t need to have it all figured out
There is, however, a feeling felt by an astonishing number of my seniors that yoga philosophy would deem sticky, heavy, and well worth the effort of shaking off. This is the need they feel for certainty about their future. They imagine that such certainty would help the ending of their college education to flow smoothly and immediately into a highly specific beginning – the start of the career they have been guided to pursue for (at least) the past four years.
I understand the guidance that they have received from parents, teachers, advisors, and the world at large, by the way. College is dauntingly expensive. An investment like this, it would be safe to assume, must pay dividends. But this assumption risks an expectation that often proves to be unwieldy and even impossible to meet – the expectation that one should have the whole of their career sorted out by the time they walk across that stage to receive their diploma.
The assumption that we need to know what is next isn’t experienced only by college students. Far from it. I think it’s to say that change is hard for most of us. And what is the future but change? It’s also safe to say that, for most of us, change would be easier to navigate if we had a clear idea of what lies ahead. Alas, this rarely comes to pass.
In fact the story is better when you don’t have it all figured out
Let’s use the long and winding nature of my own career path as an example. There is simply no way I could have foreseen that my two degrees in international political economics would lead, not to a career in development, but to an exciting seven years in publishing during the nascent years of digitization and multimedia (remember that word?). And there is absolutely no way that I would have taken my parents or even the most prescient of advisors seriously were they to have suggested that decades later I’d wind up happily teaching yoga philosophy at the university level.
My path has taught me that the only thing I can be certain about is that I have no idea what is next. The best part about this isn’t that it has lifted the heavy load of needing to be certain. It’s that my uncertainty allows me to stay curious and even excited about what will happen next in the ever-surprising story of my life.
When we’re focused on the future (what’s next), we are stealing the present moment from ourselves
While much of my perspective is the result of lots of experience and “time on the planet” (to quote my daughter’s beloved first grade teacher), it is shored up by the wisdom of the ancient yogis. Right now, we are taught, is what we’ve got. This one moment in this one day. The way to feel the most at peace is to live this moment well while keeping an open mind, an open heart, and a willingness to be surprised about what will be next.
So, to my graduating students, I hope you give yourself a minute to savor the heck out of this achievement of yours. And then I hope you savor the heck out of whatever is next – and next, and next, and next. And to the rest of us, I wish the same. Notice where you are and marvel at how you got here. Now see if you can hold on to your sense of marvel and wonder when your mind strays (as it will) in the direction of “I wonder what’s next?” It’s much more fun than certainty ever could be.
The idea of asteya or non-stealing is the third of Patanjali’s ten moral precepts. Most yoga students do not need a lesson in whether or not to take things or ideas that are not theirs. Most humans (including yoga students) do need a lesson in how much we steal from ourselves in our quest for certainty about what lies ahead in marvelous unfolding change that is life. When we can stay in the moment, we find that life is more than satisfying. It is awash in riches. Many teachers translate the Sanskrit word for riches, ratno, as gems. Take a look around. What gems are sparkling for you right here and right now?