There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human – in not having to be just happy or just sad – in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time. ~ C. JoyBell C.

 

I seem to be walking around this week leaving scattered bits of myself behind where ever I go. It happens to me when my world goes to shit in one way or another. I sort of walk around in a cloud, half present, half in my thoughts. And what I am most grateful for during this “crap-another damn thing to deal with absent-minded fog,” is for the people that seem to find those parts of myself, and lovingly reconnect them back to me, bringing unexpected gifts along the way.
 

I left my iPod that I use nearly every day for work in a well used community classroom on Wednesday morning. I was concerned it would have been adopted by any number of people who wander into that room, but also held out faith that it would somehow find its way back to me. On Thursday afternoon a man named “Todd,” who we lovingly used to call “Cello Man” from Thursday night yoga classes 6+ years ago, sent me an email to tell me he’d found it. Back then, he taught private music classes in a tiny room right next door to our classroom. His students’ cello music was most pronounced during our relaxation, when we were finished with moving, letting go, and turning inward. Back then, I initially felt concern about the “disruption” his music might cause, but in cultivating our own practice of surrender and gratitude, we all came to love the kind of meandering, sometimes melancholy flow of sound drifting into our room. And in our back and fourth emails he shared his happiness to have me and the yoga mommas as neighbors once more. This was a kind of unexpected delight and reconnection that truly lifted me.

Later, there was the stranger who ran after me to bring me my just purchased but immediately forgotten cup of comfort tea in my beloved, vibrant green personal mug, which seems to frequently make its way around my Ballard circle and back to me again through the hands of strangers. After that, I discovered I’d left behind one of my paintings brought to a creativity class for show and tell – an object that holds one of my first artistic and playful efforts, and is also a kind of expression of my soul. It now temporarily rests comfortably at home with my teacher Marcia – a vibrant and talented women who is guiding me back to my creative self. For the last 5 years I’ve been managing a large studio and yoga program which was in every way all encompassing, and am hoping to re-learn how to play and live creatively without working budgets, spreadsheets, or scouting teachers in the back of my mind. She is helping me remember how to celebrate the bumpy journey that is this being human, and was thrilled to hold onto a part of me that expressed that playful side.

Finally, having shared this bumbling day and the quote above with my yoga students, one of them came up to me after class to express her extreme appreciation for my willingness to be vulnerable, to share my conflicting inner world, and to show up in the face of it all and deliver. And this may be for me, as a teacher, the most rewarding gift of all. That in my allowing myself to be fully human – messy, distracted, confused, and content all at once – I am also gifting that allowance to others, so that we may live in a little bit softer, and more compassionate world.

 
THIS is the universe I trust and choose to live in. Filled with friends and strangers who catch me with compassion and kindness, without berating my forgetfulness as I attempt to ride this wave. It is a constant practice of faith in others and kindness towards myself. And it is here that I’ll rest until a renewed spirit returns me to the moment, and I remember to put my shoes on before leaving the house.
 
January 31, 2014