Kid's Yoga, M&M's and the politics of respect.

WARNING:  This post is a teensy bit political.  It contains my opinion on respecting each other and to quote Donald Trump, how to “Make America Great Again.”  P.S. It has nothing to do with building walls.

So how can a post about kid’s yoga and M&M’s be political?  In today’s world, anything can be twisted into something political, like the very word itself.  According to dictionary.com, “political” is an adjective with six different definitions.  Each definition has a unifying commonality of or pertaining to the word “government”.  Over the years, the meaning of the word “political” has shape shifted.  Rather than being by the people, for the people, and of the people, it has slithered into darkness, something to be reviled—lumping politicians into a stereotype of dishonesty and corruption.

Ask ten different kids what they believe the best M&M candy color is and you are certain to receive several different responses:  red, yellow, blue, brown—light or dark—it doesn’t matter.  (Keep in mind that regardless of color, they all taste the same.)  Then when they are feeling quite confident and happy with their answer, tell them they are all wrong.  Their color of choice is not the best color, because your favorite color is green and therefore, green is the best color.  Then take it a step further and tell them that because they don’t believe the same way as you, you can no longer be friends.  In fact, you are now enemies.  Watch their innocent faces contort into confusion and sadness.

See what I did there?  I used a sweet little anecdote about M&M’s, a classic American candy, to illustrate how silly it is to hate someone for simply having a different belief.  Yes…it is that simple.  Regardless if the topic is religion, political party affiliation, gun control, health care, or M&M’s, spewing hatred toward someone because they believe differently is SILLY—a term even a child understands.

I believe it is imperative people be allowed to voice their opinions, even when I don’t share their view, but I also believe it is imperative to conduct oneself in a respectful and civilized manner, and therefore I recently and for the first time, “unfriended” a FB friend for the following (unedited) post:  

“Ok I have been quiet long enough. I can no longer sit here and listen to this garbage about Syria and these refugees. Listen to the crap about ISIS. Here is the real deal. We no longer can trust any of them...not one. That sounds harsh but I don't care. If they come here again and pull an attack I promise you WE THE PEOPLE will hunt them down ourselves. Our worthless, peace of shit, coward, terrorist president is doing nothing but we will. To all you liberal pieces of shit I have an idea.... Go over there with all your huggy bullshit and live among these animals for awhile see if changes your views. It's so easy to sit on your couch and give love and crap to these animals you know nothing about. The days of these liberal views and this so called President are numbered. Than maybe we can get back to being the proud and powerful nation we once were. And before all you ass hat liberal democrats respond on here to this don't bother. Everyone is sick of your bullshit and no ones listening. I and millions of others fought on foreign dirt for this country and by God we will do it again on this dirt. So in closing.....STAND UP AMERICANS TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND PURGE THIS SICKNESS KNOWN AS LIBERAL DEMOCRATS!!!! GOD BLESS THE USA🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸”

I did not take “unfriending” this person lightly.  We were baptized in the same church, studied from the same Catechism, and took communion together throughout our young adulthood. 

Am I a hypocrite for clicking the “unfriend” button?  After all, I had just stated that I believe people are entitled to their opinions and that just because someone does not share my world view does not mean they should be my enemy.  In eighth grade Civics class we learned about Freedom of Speech and the other 9 amendments to the Constitution that make up the Bill of Rights.  We were also taught that those rights we as American citizens share, do not extend to infinity, but only to the point where they begin to impede on our neighbors rights.  I felt violated by this post.  It contained so much hate and venom that I believed if I had remained “friends” with the author, I would be submissively guilty of condoning the words within.  

So how do we make America great again?  Like Whitney Houston, sang, “The children are our future.  Teach them well and let them lead the way.”  Teach them to love and respect themselves and their peers, regardless of skin color, religious affiliation or M&M color preference.  And for goodness sakes, teach them to not refer to the person who holds the highest office in the land as a “worthless, piece of shit, coward, terrorist,”  because that’s not going to get it done.

I am not a person of power.  I do not have a large audience or celebrity status.  I am a wife and a mother, a sister and a daughter, a friend, a neighbor and a yoga instructor.  I am limited in my ability to defend against those that believe it is okay to spread hatred and bigotry, so I will continue to slowly spread my message of love and goodwill toward one another…one breath at a time.

And if you’d like to share some M&M’s, I’ll even let you have the best color…GREEN!

Life in Pieces

June 2015.  That was the last time I published a blog post.  6 long months ago.  It was also the last time, I wrote anything more than my daily "To Do" list.  I have been completely constipated--creatively speaking.  

June 2015.  We closed on a new house.  Not a new, new house--relatively old in fact--1989, but new to us.  In the beginning, we were excited.  The "new to us" house sat on Lake Norman and  I imagined myself sitting on the deck for hours sipping wine and writing, writing, writing as the water soothed my central nervous system and sparked my creativity.  I fantasized about boating and kayaking and paddle boarding.  In my minds eye, I could see my newly defined abs from all that paddling!  And most of all, I felt certain that as a family our quality of life together would increase exponentially.  The kids would be so excited to live on a lake, they'd willingly leave behind the digital world they live in and spend time frolicking in the surf.

But almost immediately, as we put our house on the market to sell, anxiety took hold of my heart and began to squeeze the breath right out of me.  The children were not allowed to sit on the furniture for fear of crushing a perfectly puffed pillow.  They were not allowed to eat inside the house.  All snacks and meals were served outside on the deck.  I stopped cooking meals.  Everything was take-out so that counters stayed clean and dishes stayed done.  I've always thought I walked extremely close to the edge of insanity.  But during this time, I jumped right off the fricking cliff.

Panic set in when the old house, which was actually newer than the new house, didn't sell within the first month.  That's right.  We closed on the new house in mid-June with no offer on the old house.  We owned two houses (and two mortgages) and the real pisser was that the kids were not even excited about moving or living on the lake.  In fact, the day the moving truck arrived,  Numero Dos threw himself on the ground.  Flailing and sobbing, he exclaimed, "My whole life is a downgrade!"

A downgrade!

Can you imagine how spoiled my children must be that moving to a house on a lake is a downgrade? Of course the truth is, he wasn't exactly wrong.  From it's brass fixtures, to it's one-piece fiberglass shower inserts, to the popcorn ceilings in the basement--this house was a downgrade, relatively speaking.  But it was still on the freaking water.  That's got to count for something, right!?

Wrong.  We experienced one disappointing set back after another.  The flooring company, which we hired to refinish the hardwood floors, flooded the house before we even moved in resulting in the decimation of the main floor powder room and the basement bedroom.  6 months later, both rooms are still barren wastelands.  The toilets were not a standard 12" on center and now sit two inches away from the walls.  The washer and dryer I purchased were too big for the space resulting in the loss of the closet doors and there was no garbage disposal.  None.  So, take the stress of not selling the first house, add in a slew of installation mishaps, multiply it by the gut-wrenching sound of your child sobbing everyday after school because we left a neighborhood he loved and you've got a recipe for depression, anger, frustration and regret.

And thus I didn't write.  Writing about anything other than my true feelings seemed disingenuous and really who wants to listen to me whine about how much it sucks that we chose to buy a house on a lake?  Does anyone feel sorry for me?  Shit, I don't even feel sorry for me.  And besides, I had the perfect solution.

We needed a boat!  A boat would make everything better.  What good is it to live on a lake if you can't even get out on the water?  And so we bought a boat.  But, you know what?  The boat did not make us feel better.  Not even by a little bit, because not only did we discover that our lack of knowledge around a boat only led to more frustration, but we also discovered that our boat lift didn't work.  Chalk up one more disappointment to the tune of $8500 in favor of the house.

Fast forward to this week--the last week of 2015, I stumbled upon this blog post.  I am going to post it in it's entirety as it is the catalyst for me picking up pen and paper this week...and I just happen to think it's really, really, good!

Big Dreams Are Made Of Little Pieces

by Grant Andrew

COO IE Dawson International

I’ve been thinking about breathing lately. 
How it just seems to happen.
We don’t think about it until it gets labored or we are short of a breath or two.
But under everything in our lives, is breathing.
It is a kind of ground for consciousness.
It is keeping the lights on.
The quality of your day is dependent on ~20,000 breaths a day.
Our world is built of pieces. Like breaths.

The quality of your internet connection reflects how well the packets are moving.
Your nutritional intake is dependent on bites of food.
Big ideas are made of little flashes moving through your brain up to 268 miles per hour. (Sparks move inside you.)(Baby, you’re a fireworkfly)
We are pieces of pieces.
Companies, communities, and causes are made of people.
We see things as monolithic – solid, whole, together, but when you really get inside something, there are always pieces.
Atoms, Lego blocks, letters, and slow-twitch muscle fibers. All pieces.
What we accomplish is made of pieces too. The life you make, the work you do, the relationships you’re a part of…made of pieces.
It is tempting this time of year to teeter between euphoria and despair.
In every life, in every year, there’s always a hope for more. We have almost infinite capacity for hope and longing, so we want more from everything. Standing at the end of such a clear block of time, it’s not difficult to look back and despair for all that wasn’t, didn’t, or won’t be.
Breathe.
Turning our gaze forward, it’s easy to imagine the next year differently. So much that will be. All our hopes/dreams/longings manifested. Big things birthed, big breaks healed, big holes filled. Such a glorious and euphoric view, the future is.
The truth is more pedestrian. The future and the past are all just pieces. The same pieces, actually, that you have right now.
Breathe.  Swallow.  Blink.  Think.
That’s what makes this life beautiful and difficult.
Everything is small, simple, easy. The next right move, the next deep breath, the next right word.
But everything worth doing is difficult because it is a million right moves, a thousand deep breathes, pages and pages and pages of the next right words.
Life is made of pieces. We traffic in pieces. We are made of pieces. We are pieces. All we get is PIECES.
So even now, good traveler, as you stand in this present, this piece, at the moment when the line of NOW and the end of a big block of time happen to align, don’t get lost.
Your task today is easy. Your task for this next year is simple:
Take control of the pieces.
That’s it.
Think of all the big dreams you have. The moments you long for. The ones that will take away all your breaths. Break them down. To pieces. Look at them, so cute and cuddly. The atomic layer of your deepest hopes. Just little pieces. The tiniest manifestation of your dreams.
Look at this next year. 

Don’t see it whole. Don’t see it in quarters or months.
See it in seconds. Minutes. Moments.
Set your intentions high – aim for your Everest – then come back to the present, set your compass true, and a take a step.
Take a breath. Swallow. Blink. Think.
2016 is coming. And 17. And 18. Don’t worry about those.
We are made of pieces, we make pieces, pieces make us.
Please make good pieces. The world is hungry for your hearts. 
Enjoy the journey.

Throughout all the stress, anger, disappointment and regret, rather than lean on my yoga practice for strength, I ran from it.  In fact, I practically hid.  Yoga is quiet and calm.  It requires stillness of the mind and body.  But it takes time to sit in stillness, and I didn't have any time.  I was too busy trying to sell one house and prepare to move into another house.  There was too much cleaning to do.  And then there was too much packing to do, and then unpacking, moving, worrying, and mostly feeling sorry for myself.  Do you know how much energy is required to feel sorry for oneself?  I had nothing left for my yoga practice.  I didn't even have time to sit and breathe.

And then I came across this lovely, poetic blog post and the first line caught my attention:  I've been thinking about breathing lately.  I used to tell any one that would listen, that for me, the magic of yoga was in the breath.  And yet for the past six months, I have been holding my breath, drowning in regret and self-loathing.

"The future and the past are all just pieces. The same pieces, actually, that you have RIGHT NOW.  Life is made of pieces. We traffic in pieces. We are made of pieces. We are pieces. All we get is PIECES.  Our world is built of pieces--Like breaths." 

There is an old zen saying:  "You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you are too busy; then you should sit for an hour."

This year, I plan to breathe more, regret less and break everything down into small, delicious, bite-sized pieces.

There are so many morals to this story.  I know I don't need to type them in black and white.  As a post script, we received an offer on the old house mid-July and closed early August.  One week later, we made our first payment on the the new house, being spared the hardship of making two mortgage payments in the same month.

I am sending up prayers of thanksgiving right this second as I am once again reminded of how everything always works out in the end.

Happy 2016.  

May your year be filled with lots of happy pieces!

Life is what you make it.

Life is what you make it.  

This is a hard concept to understand as a young person.  When you're 10, 12, 14, 16...time moves slow.  Your parents don't know anything, 30 is old, 40 is ancient, and appreciating what you have today because it may not be there tomorrow doesn't exist in the underdeveloped, teenage brain.  It's taken me nearly 45 years to discover this and at times I still regress.

I was recently reminded of this on a trip to Washington DC, when we--the parental units, opted to head North for Spring Break while the rest of the country headed South to the land of all things Mouseketeer.  We opted for historical and educational versus princess tea parties and character parades.  The children would have preferred hats with ears.

We rented a turn of the century row house in the NE quadrant of the city in a neighborhood currently undergoing gentrification.  It sat on a loud, busy corner where sirens screamed throughout the night.  And with the constant hustle and bustle that comes with being planted in the middle of a busy metropolitan area that never sleeps, it could have significantly benefited from blackout shades.  In describing the home, I'm reminded of a Mother Goose rhyme:

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in a crooked little house.

Yes.  The house was crooked.  Very crooked.  It had crooked floors and crooked walls, but I didn't mind.  With every out of square corner or creak in the floor, I imagined the life this house had lived for the past hundred years, the things that it had witnessed, and I felt alive.  I was now part of it's history. I fed off the energy of the city and relished feeling like I was in the epicenter of something really significant, something newsworthy.   And for one night I was--as I witnessed a barrage of police cars scream through the narrow streets ending a high speed pursuit just blocks away.   It certainly wasn't a four star resort.  It was better.  And thankfully my children didn't complain about the sights or sounds or lack of room service once. The house was equipped with television and wi-fi and all was good in teenage-brain land.

We spent five, over-scheduled days in the city, and as anyone who is familiar with DC knows, that was not enough.  We filled our days with tours, museums, monuments and memorials covering more than thirty miles on foot and canvassing even more distance by train and yet we left with miles and miles still undiscovered. 

Arlington National Cemetery

The majority of children today and even my own Generation X cannot fully comprehend the sacrifices that the generations before us made for our freedoms.  It, however, becomes a little more comprehendible when you stand facing a wall with more than 58,000 names engraved in memoriam or stand before a field of gold stars representing lives lost with the words, "Here We Mark The Price Of Freedom."  A humbleness befalls you as you walk amongst a backdrop of simple white, marble headstones that date back to the Civil War, and stand silently in reverence as a funeral procession passes for service men still being buried today.  The 45 year old me understood how hallowed the ground beneath my feet was.  I'm not sure the 16 year old me would have.  


At times during the week, the teenage brains preferred to sleep as the landscape of America the Beautiful passed by.  At times they needed to be told to put away the electronic devices.  And, at times they needed to be reminded that life does not offer guarantees, take advantage while the opportunity presents itself.   Life is what you make it.  You can spend your hours brooding.  You can spend your hours mindlessly in front of a computer screen.  You can choose to be unhappy, ungrateful and selfish or you can choose the opposite.  It took me a long time to figure that out and without my yoga practice, I'm not sure I would have ever arrived.  Today I choose happiness. Today I choose to be grateful.  

Because life is what I make it.

A Winning Attitude

Today I sat for several hours in an over-crowded school cafeteria patiently waiting while Child Numero Uno auditioned for the all-District Honor Band.   I am no stranger to sitting and waiting.  I'm a parent.  It's what I do.   This is not even my first time at this venue.  I've visited this cafeteria with its cold, over-priced pizza for the past three years.  And you know what?   I don't mind cold, over-priced pizza.  In fact, I rather like it.  It symbolizes my child's willingness to try...to put himself in the path of failure, and for that I am extremely proud.  In Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the author Amy Chua states in part, "...the only activities your children should be permitted to do are those which they can eventually win a medal; and that medal must be gold."*

Clearly, I am no tiger mom.


And while he's had some success(es), this event is not one of them.  With 17 counties in the district and only two tenor saxophones chosen each year, the odds are stacked against him.  But still he tries. And still I'm proud.

Like Ms. Chua, you may believe my attitude is the parental justification of a child with a track record for failure, but can you imagine where we'd be if everyone who tried and failed, just simply quit trying?

Did you know that Michael Jordan, easily considered one of the best basketball players of all time, was actually cut from his high school basketball team?

What if J.K. Rowling had given up after her fifteenth rejection letter?  Can you imagine a world without the infamous boy wizard and his lightning bolt, shaped scar?

Or that for every home run Babe Ruth hit, he struck out twice?  When asked about this he simply said, "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run."

I couldn't agree more.  If we quit trying, we are certain to never succeed.

I haven't always had such a positive perspective about failure, but practicing yoga has taught me a few things beyond downward facing dog.  For example, it has taught me to be present; to live for today, to let go of yesterday, to not agonize about the future.  In doing so, I am able to shed my ego.  If I fail today, tomorrow will bring a fresh opportunity to try again.

You will often hear a yoga teacher touting:  Be. Here. Now.  It's not just a mantra, it's a way of life.  That's not to say I don't have moments of self-doubt.  I do.  But yoga empowers me to acknowledge those feelings and accept them.  Once I accept them, I can let them go, and the best way to do that is to come to the mat and breathe.

As of this writing, I still don't know whether or not Child Numero Uno has been chosen to participate in the all-District Honor Band this year.  Maybe this third attempt will be the one that puts him on the team. What I do know however, with 100% certainty, is that he definitely won't make it, if he doesn't try.



"You create your own universe as you go along"
~Winston Churchill, Nobel peace prize winner, twice elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, failed sixth-grade on his first attempt.

*As a side note, I want to clarify that when I read, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, I loved it!  I only used a small snippet to prove a point in this post.  Overall, it was well-written, self-deprecating, and in the end the author experiences personal growth through the struggles she encounters with her rebellious younger daughter who prefers playing tennis to playing the violin.  Gasp!

The Power of Positive Thinking

As part of my 200 hour yoga teacher training, I was tasked with journaling 5 things I felt grateful for each day, over the course of 30 days.  From this assignment, I discovered that there is an amazing shift in paradigm that occurs quite quickly when asked to contemplate gratitude.  I gained a new found appreciation for perspective.

At the end of each day as I sat down to journal, I discovered the ability to turn a negative situation into a positive one.

"Saw a snake today--grateful it didn't chase me down and attack."

"Backed out of the garage with the passenger-side door open--although a bit askew, grateful it still closes."

"Sat in traffic today while an accident was being cleared--grateful to see both drivers outside of their vehicles uninjured.  Double grateful I reached my destination safely and without incident--even if I was a little late."

In all of these instances, I could have wallowed in the negative:

Seeing a snake created a fight or flight response.  Because of my fear of snakes, I chose flight.  I turned back and walked an additional mile in order to avoid crossing its path.  Fortunately it was a beautiful morning, I had no where else to be, and I needed the exercise. 

Crunching my car door may prove to be an expensive repair.  Fortunately, it is not a repair that is critical to being able to use the car.  The repair can wait--if I even have it repaired at all. 

And while being late usually induces anxiety, I used my yogi Dirga Breath to remain calm.  And when I finally did arrive at the doctor's office after sitting in traffic for the accident, I discovered she too was running a bit behind schedule.  My time spent sitting in the waiting room was significantly less than it would have been had I arrived on time. 

Three potentially negative situations; three positive perspectives.

Abraham Lincoln said, " We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."  

I will admit I haven't always viewed the world from a rosy place of love and gratitude.  For most of my life, I had a "glass half-empty" soul.  I loved drama. I loved exaggeration.  I loved playing the victim.
  

"Woe is me...I had to walk an extra mile because there was a horrible reptilian creature blocking me from my path."
 
 "Woe is me...I cannot drive an ugly car.  We are going to have to fore go our family vacation to pay for the repair so my car can be pretty again."

"Woe is me...I had to sit in traffic, causing me to be late to my appointment, and no one was even injured."

My husband used to say, "You're not happy, unless you're miserable."  He was right.  And that is one more thing for which I am grateful.  I am grateful to have found yoga..not just as an exercise program, but as an entire mind-body experience.  Those words have since been shuttered from his vocabulary.  In the present moment, I have such peace and contentment--all because of a change in perspective.

So...when you're having a bad day, see if you can shift your perspective.  Try looking at the situation from a different angle, and see if you can find gratitude where before there might not have been any.

You'll be grateful you did!