I’ve written a lot about my yoga class and instructor, Michelle, at NOAC but I have to say it is uncanny how whatever is weighing heavy on my mind seems to be the theme of the month. This month it’s addiction. Dig?
We were talking this morning about what it means to be bound by happiness and some felt that it means to be attached to happy, some felt that it was about not seeing happiness when it presented itself, and some thought happiness was sometimes sought in things or people that actually do not bring happiness.
My thoughts to the class were a) I carry around this impending joy that I want my loved ones to feel as well, but I am sad when I see their struggles and it makes my happiness at once precious and isolating, and b) when I am wanting my friends to be happy, I have my own perceived notion of what the terms are, take for example my friend who cannot find happiness in love and who chooses relationships that have short lives. I feel like she is caught on the same rung of life. But Tatjana pointed out to me I should be happy for her happiness even if it is short-term and not going to lead to a pattern change.
So we move from this discussion to breathing practice – breathe in “I am not ______” and breathe out “I am” and in that breath I accept my happiness lives in the same world where others struggle and I make a point to try to find joy in other’s version of happiness.
Which is why when I spoke with one of the Nicaraguan men who live downstairs from my mother and learned they had a party on Saturday night and mom wanted him to help her downstairs to dance, instead he brought up carne asada and a cocktail while she sat on the stairs and smoked and drank and joined the fiesta from her perch.