Patience and Play

A friend writes to me about reaching further in a yoga pose:

My head dropped back, my back arching and suddenly my “little baby pinkie fingers” grazed the carpet. I stopped, the sensation alone shocking me. I had never found the floor before … Thoughts flashed across my brain over and over and over. Images of the posture, the full expression, hearing the dialog, feeling the sweat pour off my body. But I was frozen. I couldn’t, in that instant, even remember what to do next.

What happened? What worked this time that didn’t work before? And what should I have done instead of chickening out and coming out early?

Another friend of mine, a poet with whom I share many significant bonds, is in the middle of a transition. The college he works for has closed its doors and he is in the middle of moving to a new state and a new university, selling his farm house with its accompanying apple orchard, and hovering between being in relationship and not. In all of it, two things are constant: his poetry and his dog. He’s recently written to me about the sense of momentum without movement, of things changing both utterly and also not at all. He is certain of his future, to the extent that a person can be, he is simply not certain how the road will curve to bring that future in.

I’m an impatient person. I know this about myself. I cannot meditate, it drives me crazy. I have a very hard time imagining writing a long novel because of the time it will take. My interest deviates from my goals too often in life.

I once decided I would be a yoga teacher. I attended classes, I studied the path, I practiced almost every day. I learned about anatomy. I learned about alignment. I learned about the tree of yoga, its branches pushing out into the community and the heavens, its roots digging in deeply to the soul, the heart, the impatient brain. I gave it up, though. I gave it up after I’d drafted up a business plan for my own studio, after I’d spent hundreds of dollars on workshops and seminars.

I gave it up because I was sure that I’d made it, and then was told I had not. I applied to a teacher training with Anusara founder John Friend, and was turned down. I was told I needed more practice with teachers, and needed some practice teaching others. I got frustrated: I felt ready, I insisted, and here I was being blocked. The truth is, John Friend was right. And my reaction to his rejection of my application to learn with him made that clear. I wasn’t ready, precisely because I wanted so badly to be.

In my hours today and yesterday, I have been tracing the outline for a novel I’m not sure I can write. I’m also not sure I can’t write it, and I think that’s what terrifies me the most. I am outlining this great story, one that’s very interesting to me, and one that’s like nothing I’ve ever written (but is, in truth, very like the books I admired the most back when I used to read for fun). And what terrifies me is that there is no reason I can’t write the book. Well, except one.

There’s nothing so fearsome as being ready to be ourselves, to accomplish what we really want. And I think the reason why is because we can never be the ones to decide we’re ready. In the end, in order to be what we want, to have what we want, to accomplish what we’ve waited for, I think we need to be ready to let go entirely.

It really does boil down to that. We have to be willing to lie down and breathe and be patient. Or we have to be willing to shrug and smile and play. When John Friend told me I couldn’t be in his class, being patient and playful would have taken the form of more yoga and more training, all wrapped in the joy of the process. My friend the poet, in the midst of his transition, keeps running marathons and keeps writing poetry. And I hope my friend the yogini, when she reaches for and is bewildered by ustrasana the next time, will be gentle, maybe shed a tear or two, and then laugh and look at her blessed “little baby pinkie fingers” in wonder and admiration.

There are an eternity of moments coming, and in those we will find transitions resolved, novels completed, poses accomplished. When and how they’ll come, we can’t know. That they will, we must rest assured. Maybe the joy is in all the moments of anxious potential.

Permission

I feel like I have to ask for permission. Like I am a small child standing in a large, mostly empty living room and who knows the space was made for twirling around in circles into dizziness. But, this is a living room where many fine things have been collected - crystal bowls, an antique chest from 1882, a vase of blooming orchids, an elegant leather couch - and while my child’s mind is pretty darn sure I can twirl around without breaking anything, there is the adult voice that tells me to be cautious, serious. The same voice I heard so many times in my youth when going into store with nicer merchandise. “This is a hands-off store.” And I’d nod a knowing and cooperative nod, fully aware that my chubby child fingers might wreak havoc simply by touching something.

But sometimes in my youth, havoc could be avoided simply by asking permission. The adult always knew - or knew calculably better than I did - when the odds of breakage or mishap were low. Granting permission, I perceived, was a matter of careful consideration. In the living room with the fine objects, or in the store with the expensive merchandise, countless other material circumstances hovered about, and the adult mind took them all in where my immature peripheral sense could not. The couch and the antique chest were too close together, or my outstretched, spinning hands might catch on the blooming orchids, the crystal bowl; or, there was a display in the store that looked precarious and topple-able, the fragile thing I wanted to touch was slippery and silvery and might fall from my grasp. The adult, it seemed, could veritably see into the future. “Why don’t you go outside and spin?” or “I’ll hold it for you so you can touch it.”

Being careful, I learned, was ethical. One must learn to respect the fragility of valuable things.

I will not tell you how much I’ve spent on education in my lifetime. It’s an absurd amount, and incongruous with the value of what I purchased. But, suffice it to say that my education is a crystal bowl, a vase of blooming orchids, a slippery, silvery thing that’s meant to sit on a shelf and be admired; not fingerprinted, and certainly not dropped. Mine is an education in writing, and an education in the literary. Mine is an education in ideas. Lofty ideas. Important ideas. I’ve been trained to write stories about ideas, and I’ve been trained to disregard frippery.

With that slippery, silvery object has come the certificate of authenticity. You put such objects on a shelf in plain view. You do not closet them, or worse, place them in the bathroom.

The message of my education has been: “Don’t twirl. You might break something.”

So. What do I do… when I have no ideas… but twirling ones?

It doesn’t seem so easy as the easiest response: “Well, for God’s sake, twirl!” Because I’m standing here, looking at that slippery, silvery object and really, really worried it could crash to the ground. And everyone who knows me for that fancy thing, everyone who respects me for that fancy thing, will be mortified if I break it.

Twirl… carefully? Calculatedly? Go outside and twirl?

I feel like I have to ask permission.