Saturday awesomeness

Beautiful new location for outdoor yoga!

I didn't even know this park was being built, and I probably would never have known if it hadn't become the new location.

This is so much better than looking at shoppers and a pile of rocks.

I've got lots of reading to do, so it's time to head out to the porch with an iced coffee and a cat throwing himself against the window screen.

Creating happiness

Have you heard of The Happiness Project?

I have to admit, when I first saw links for this blog on Facebook, I was like, how annoying, another happy person telling me all I have to do to be happy is be happy and have a positive outlook.

Nope. Not so much.

I think it's really important not only to admit to ourselves that we are struggling with something, but to admit it to others. I struggled with this a lot as a teacher, as my colleagues waxed joyful with stories of sweet things their students did and lessons that went amazingly well.

 Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

I had awesome lessons and sweet students too, but I forgot about them in the morass of kids who threw milk cartons and fell asleep in the back of class.

You can imagine how little I care for social media, then.

More and more, as I progress through my training, I start to understand the idea that though pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. I start to recognize those little efforts that add up to improvements in my world. I start seeing "positive people" not as unrelentingly positive but struggling, just like everyone else, looking for the opportunity in the difficulty, looking for ways to examine discontent and find a way to change it instead of wallowing in it.

Source: fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net via Katherine on Pinterest

Positive attitude? Maybe for me, this manifests as a belief that I can change my circumstances. That to accept what is, does not mean I have to be defeated by it. That there is something I can do, every day.

 Source: fridgedoor.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Help

On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure. Even a little effort toward spiritual awareness will protect you from the greatest fear. ... No one who does good work will ever come to a bad end. (Bhagavad Gita, as translated by Eknath Easwaran)

I hate asking for help. This is partly from my own desire to appear strong and capable and partly from social anxiety and partly from something else that I haven't quite figured out yet, fear of being a bother to anyone, thank you, Jewish guilt?

It's so much easier for me when people offer, and I can choose to accept or decline their help. But offering is fraught with its own hazards. How can you know that someone needs help, wants help, will accept help? Without being able to experience the situation the way they do, you can't know how they will experience your offer. Imagine someone who is blind or has low vision. It might be tempting to reach out and guide this person across a street or to a seat on a bus. But how frightening it must be to have someone touch you when you literally don't see it coming.

Mr. Rogers told us that we ask people if they want help before just straight out giving help. Unless they're in imminent danger, most people want to show that they are independent, strong, capable. Let them be all those things, but offer help if you wish to.

Some people get incredibly, inexplicably offended when we refuse their help. They feel, I am offering, I am leaving my own little bubble of isolation to connect with another human being. How dare that person refuse my connection? Stated that way, it becomes obvious that they are helping, not out of a selflessness and love for others, but to satisfy their own need to be needed.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to feel needed and valuable. One of the greatest helps I have ever been given was for a friend to ask me for help during a time when I was unemployed, depressed, and feeling useless. The opportunity to be of use to someone probably benefited me more than any help I was able to give her.

Ultimately you have offered; you have made an effort toward good. That effort exists, whether the other person accepts your help or declines it. And that effort is enough.

The Stones had it right

I have this theory I'm working on, about the things we need versus the things we want.

It started with yoga, something that's supposed to balance us. L told us her savasana story -- basically, that she used to skip out on final relaxation because she didn't see the point. She'd go to her car and feel agitated, flighty, scatterbrained. Finally her teacher asked if she had somewhere to be after class, and when L said no, the teacher replied, "Good, you can stay for savasana."

L didn't realize that savasana, something so counter to her natural go-go-go tendency, was exactly what she needed to ground her.

In the same way, we often seek practices, jobs, partners, companions, who are the exact opposite of what we need.

We choose to stick with what's comfortable, easy, and familiar, instead of the things that will push us toward change.

We choose to do instead of be.

So I'm moving on from those times that I didn't get what I wanted, because it turns out that what I wanted wasn't the right thing for me.

Maybe I didn't get what I wanted, but not getting it was probably what I needed.

What a difference two years makes

Happy Saturday!

June 14, 2010

June 12, 2011

June 2, 2012

Bits of identity

Inevitably when I start clearing out the house, I run across things that I'm not ready to let go of. Here is a short list:

• Pants that fit me last year, but are now three sizes too big
• Books from my classroom library
• Other teaching supplies from my classroom
• Picture frames that are perhaps broken and perhaps salvageable for alternate purposes
• Paint cans
• A massive collection of cassette tapes

Honestly the vast majority of things I find fall into one of two categories: Things I Need to Find the Proper Way to Dispose of and Things I Am Going to Do Something with Someday.

The teacher things and the pants, though, they are different.

They are bits of identity. I once was this. I might be this again. 

Do I want to gain back those 20 pounds? No, of course not. Not that I was by any means, needing to lose 20 pounds, but it did take me from the high end of my healthy weight range to just below the middle of it. But my weight has been known to creep upwards in a slow but steady manner. I might fit into those pants again in a year's time, and who knows if I will be able to afford new things then. Right now I'm certainly struggling to find things I like and can afford.

Did I want to lose my teaching job? Not really. But I'd been struggling to teach for years. For two and a half years I looked for and despaired of looking for a position. The one I had lasted a year and a half, and was a far cry from what I'd been doing in my New York City classroom. I felt like my hands were tied, like no one cared, and like we were purposely isolated from one another. Five years now, I've been holding on to classroom supplies and books, wondering if I'm ever going to use them again. I've moved this stuff twice. Every time I clear out, I let a little more of it go. I put the pens, staples, and other general office supplies into use. I donate books to the library. It's not all gone yet, but I'm starting to feel like the desire to use it, is.

Toughen up

One of the most enduring images of myself in my own mind is me, at 3 or 4 years of age, sitting in a swing at my preschool. I was younger than many of the kids in my class and therefore shorter. My feet dangled from the swing, my legs not long enough to reach the hollowed-out ground beneath it to propel the swing on my own. I had to ask for help to swing, when other children did not. That was when I began to feel as if I were set apart from others.

As a first-year teacher I was constantly told to develop a thicker skin. I was told I would not make it as a teacher if I cared about what the kids said about me.

Well, I'm sorry. I never learned how to thicken my skin. I never learned how to protect my heart. I never learned how to stop caring about the people I met, the children whose lives were even lonelier than mine had been. I never stopped being affected by their pain, even when they were taking out their pain on me.

I never learned how to stop getting my heart broken.

I think I might finally be okay with that.