The Day I did Everything Right

Doing everything right is as much of an ego trap as doing everything wrong.

So hard to switch off the grasp!

I had a lovely day, yesterday. An easy day. Healthy, rested, good energy. Everything that depends on me got fed and cleaned. I was able to hook my hand on my inner thigh in twisting trichonasana as if I had it there all the time, as if it were Jay's ass. Every trichonasana in the book--ha ha.

Then at the end of the day, my stomach started clenching, I couldn't get to sleep. "What about tomorrow?" I kept thinking. Lying in my clean white, ironed sheets. "Will I do tomorrow as well?" How do you unclench?

I worry, I worry, I worry. And worrying makes me mean. When I'm exercising, I'm thinking--okay--how will I get this done Friday? This is such a great day! This is going so well! Oh, God, will Wednesday be okay, too?

What would I be like if I didn't do this much yoga, meditation and exercise? Probably exactly the same, only fatter. Man....no relief in sight.

There was this moment in The Darjeeling Limited where Owen Wilson's character is sitting with his brothers in the desert and he says something like, "Okay, we're going to come back here every year and do this..." And Adrian Brody says, "No we're not. We're never going to come here again."

And I really liked Wes Anderson then, because he got at something so essential about that character--the need to take every new experience and find a place for it--to make it a ritual. I do that. Okay. This tea is wonderful. I'm going to come here every second Thursday and sit in this chair by the window and drink it in this cup. And if I don't do that, I'm a failure. Shit! I forgot! It's the second Thursday of the month! I was supposed to go to that shop and sit by the window and have that god damn jasmine tea again. Acck. I suck. You grasp it. You make it precious. You take control.

And that is what closes your heart, I think. Sorry, this is all very unformed, I know. You have to understand, Dear Reader, that I am using this blog mainly for me, I am trying to figure things out. I am trying to open my heart. So I am occasionally going to be incoherent. If you have insights or things to add--please don't hesitate.

But I really empathized with that character, because I am that Owen Wilson character. I do plot out my life in 15 minute chunks, I know where everyone has to be and what they have to do and what they have to have to be there, and if I screw up, I've failed. I am quintessentially uncool. And it's funny that I've evolved into this, because, listen, Dear Reader, I was the wildest, sweetest thing you can imagine. I didn't wear a watch, I didn't wear shoes. I jumped into trucks with strange lumberjacks at stoplights and sprang naked into mountain springs with them 20 minutes later.

Not that this sort of behavior was so great for building a stable life, or maintaining a good GPA. Or a GPA at all for that matter. (At one point at Dartmouth, my GPA was .8) And at 41, with two kids, this sort of attitude is not at all productive.

Well, when I was sitting this morning, I realized that this self, this one who's getting the house organized and clean, this self that always has an umbrella and that I always thought was the goal, is not it. I realized that this is as much of a storm flushing through as anger or jealousy, so I let that flow through me, and felt better. I saw my body and my breath as being as much of a force of nature as the grand canyon. Subject to the same immutable laws.

Hmmph.

That's my 1/2 hour. Thank God.