Signs of Life

Sometimes things are just as they are. Most of the time, really. Things just are. We don't always want them to be that way, they just are that way. An interesting way to consider things is to choose to experience them as they are. Not choose them to necessarily be that way, but choose to experience life as it is. Not resisting it. Letting it be. (Isn't there a song about that? Hmmm.)

This is a difficult thing for me to do. I want things to be different than they are. I want my upstairs neighbours to be different. I want my daughter's behaviour to be different. I want my job (yep, even as a yoga teacher) to be different. Heck, I even want myself to be different. I want to be more resolved about certain things. I want to be in a different situation, not the one I'm in.

And then I practise letting things be as they are. Choosing to experience the noise of running upstairs. I choose to breathe as the bedroom is messy and the video games are going on. I choose to experience myself growing and grieving and enjoying the little things. And then I experience the life I have, not avoid it and keep waiting for life to start a new chapter. I live it now. And then I don't. And then I wish things were different and that I went to bed earlier and had more money and travelled more and lived in a place where winter wasn't so long. And then I breathe and look at the plant on my table and see popcorn on the floor and that all makes me smile.

One time at a meditation retreat I learned how the Buddha walked the middle path - he put all of his weight on his left foot and then all of it on his right foot - that's how you walk the middle path. Another way I describe it is like signs of life. Sometimes I think we're striving for this middle path, this smooth line, this neutral place. In a hospital that's called a flat line. You're dead. What life looks like is ups and downs. Those are the signs of life. That's how it goes. Those are signs of life...