Today was the first official cross-country training day for my youngest who will be running this fall with the high school cross-country team. She dressed and ate and was out the door, water bottle in hand, just after 7:30 a.m. Not bad for a teenager who has been enjoying the later, longer mornings summer vacation provides. But she's not teenager enough to drive herself to practice and back again; so, I found myself grumbling as I headed out the door to retrieve her because I hadn't had the time to drink my morning coffee.
My grumbling didn't last long. About a mile from where I was to pick up my daughter, I came to an abrupt stop. Traffic like this meant only one thing. An accident. And not a minor one. Up ahead, car after car was abandoning its place in traffic, executing sharp U-turns for a better way around the congestion. Now I was going to be late, I thought, but only very briefly because the thought that came next would challenge everything I took for granted as a comfort on this coastal drive.
Sometimes the cross-country team trains in the canyons on the trails in the coastal foothills. And sometimes, the team members run in a long inconsistent line--marked by the degrees of swiftness among the individual runners--along the shoulder of the coast highway. Like that, the traffic became oppressive. I dreaded getting to the crest of the hill in case I would see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles too close to the school campus where moments before I was convinced my daughter safely waited, impatient perhaps, and tapping her foot to highlight every minute I was late. When I finally arrived at the crest of the hill, I saw precisely what I had feared--emergency vehicles, flashing lights, even a helicopter circling--and all of it uncomfortably close to my destination.
When the writer John Gregory Dunne died suddenly of a massive heart attack mid-sentence as his wife, the writer Joan Didion, was setting the table for dinner, in the moment all Didion could hold onto was the idea that "life changes in the instant." Later, Didion would write eloquently in her book The Year of Magical Thinking about how she lived through that first year of loss, describing in acute journalistic detail her initial reactions to her husband's sudden passing and the subsequent slow unraveling of any fixed notions she held about life and death and memory and survival. Initially, what Didion recalled was the ordinariness of events as they led to the moment of Dunne's death. In fact, Didion writes, it is the ordinariness of things that makes the mind want to resist what is happening.
This is how I felt as I inched closer to the school where I would be picking up my daughter. I passed people talking to one another on the beach; lifeguards instructing young children enrolled in this year's summer program; gulls flying in the air; surfers on the waves. I was watching all of them for a sign that they knew what had happened up ahead in the traffic on the highway. The fact that they all seemed perfectly content to be doing what they were doing made me want to believe that this was an ordinary day. We were all doing what we had planned to be doing at this time on this day No one showed signs of agitation like something we should be worried about was happening a short distance up the road. I was one of them, I told myself. But I wasn't entirely sure. My mind seemed intent on resisting certainty either way.
The shape of a mother's worry is a narrow passage between resisting and preparing for the worst. The best means of navigation, naturally, is to do what we are told to do over and over again in yoga: Return to our breath. First, one breath. Inhale. Exhale. Then, another. Inhale. Exhale. Continue until we find we are back in the present moment. It can be a long journey. For me, this meant reigning in my thoughts of the accident ahead and returning to being in the car, driving in the traffic, inching slowly toward a future that I was not yet meant to read. In the long interval between first one breath and then the next, I thought about the Maharaj-ji, Neem Karoli Baba, who had been one of the subjects of my conversation this past weekend on Out on a Limb. I had interviewed husband and wife Jeremy and Lily Cushman Frindel on the subject of generosity and love. Jeremy wrote and directed the documentary "One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das," and both Jeremy and Lily co-founded a by-donation only yoga school four years ago that continues to operate as such. Maharaj-ji had become the guru to a group of Westerners in the early 70s who went to India in search of meaning, truth, and an answer to the question about what to do with their lives. The time these Westerners spent with Maharaj-ji became pivotal to how they have lived their lives: Krishna Das became a kirtan master, introducing the West to the sacred names of the divine; Baba Ram Dass became a great spiritual teacher and has written many books about his experiences on the spiritual path; Dr. Larry Brilliant founded the Seva Foundation and set about curing the world of some of its most incurable illnesses; and the list goes on.
Maharaj-ji was incredibly generous with this group of Westerners. As he admits in Jeremy's award-winning documentary, "I gave you more than I gave the Indians." He showed this small band of Westerners a means of tapping into an endless source of compassion and love. Almost as if Maharaj-ji was able to provide these men with something that would fuel and sustain them throughout the rest of their lives. Between inhale, exhale, and one more inch forward in traffic, I wondered what Maharaj-ji's counsel would be about worry. It would no doubt begin and end with a big belly laugh. How did Neem Karoli Baba embrace suffering? What does it look like and feel like to allow a place for the inevitable suffering of our lives? Was Maharaj-ji's big form that Krishna Das waited to witness at the temple at Kainchi really that big?
During Saturday's Yin Yoga class when my teacher talked about the long journey of the breath, I imagined her referring to it--as Krishna Das did of Maharaj-ji--in its biggest form. As in the breath that takes us through our entire lives. Like the vast peaceful presence the Westerners felt with Maharaj-ji. Like complete surrender. The long journey of the breath is a long journey of letting go. Although sometimes the best we can manage is to hold tight. As I did during the long drive to pick up my daughter. When I finally arrived, she was still with her teammates doing follow-up stretches from their run. This was fine by me because it gave me a moment to close my eyes and finally, fully exhale.
My grumbling didn't last long. About a mile from where I was to pick up my daughter, I came to an abrupt stop. Traffic like this meant only one thing. An accident. And not a minor one. Up ahead, car after car was abandoning its place in traffic, executing sharp U-turns for a better way around the congestion. Now I was going to be late, I thought, but only very briefly because the thought that came next would challenge everything I took for granted as a comfort on this coastal drive.
Sometimes the cross-country team trains in the canyons on the trails in the coastal foothills. And sometimes, the team members run in a long inconsistent line--marked by the degrees of swiftness among the individual runners--along the shoulder of the coast highway. Like that, the traffic became oppressive. I dreaded getting to the crest of the hill in case I would see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles too close to the school campus where moments before I was convinced my daughter safely waited, impatient perhaps, and tapping her foot to highlight every minute I was late. When I finally arrived at the crest of the hill, I saw precisely what I had feared--emergency vehicles, flashing lights, even a helicopter circling--and all of it uncomfortably close to my destination.
When the writer John Gregory Dunne died suddenly of a massive heart attack mid-sentence as his wife, the writer Joan Didion, was setting the table for dinner, in the moment all Didion could hold onto was the idea that "life changes in the instant." Later, Didion would write eloquently in her book The Year of Magical Thinking about how she lived through that first year of loss, describing in acute journalistic detail her initial reactions to her husband's sudden passing and the subsequent slow unraveling of any fixed notions she held about life and death and memory and survival. Initially, what Didion recalled was the ordinariness of events as they led to the moment of Dunne's death. In fact, Didion writes, it is the ordinariness of things that makes the mind want to resist what is happening.
This is how I felt as I inched closer to the school where I would be picking up my daughter. I passed people talking to one another on the beach; lifeguards instructing young children enrolled in this year's summer program; gulls flying in the air; surfers on the waves. I was watching all of them for a sign that they knew what had happened up ahead in the traffic on the highway. The fact that they all seemed perfectly content to be doing what they were doing made me want to believe that this was an ordinary day. We were all doing what we had planned to be doing at this time on this day No one showed signs of agitation like something we should be worried about was happening a short distance up the road. I was one of them, I told myself. But I wasn't entirely sure. My mind seemed intent on resisting certainty either way.
The shape of a mother's worry is a narrow passage between resisting and preparing for the worst. The best means of navigation, naturally, is to do what we are told to do over and over again in yoga: Return to our breath. First, one breath. Inhale. Exhale. Then, another. Inhale. Exhale. Continue until we find we are back in the present moment. It can be a long journey. For me, this meant reigning in my thoughts of the accident ahead and returning to being in the car, driving in the traffic, inching slowly toward a future that I was not yet meant to read. In the long interval between first one breath and then the next, I thought about the Maharaj-ji, Neem Karoli Baba, who had been one of the subjects of my conversation this past weekend on Out on a Limb. I had interviewed husband and wife Jeremy and Lily Cushman Frindel on the subject of generosity and love. Jeremy wrote and directed the documentary "One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das," and both Jeremy and Lily co-founded a by-donation only yoga school four years ago that continues to operate as such. Maharaj-ji had become the guru to a group of Westerners in the early 70s who went to India in search of meaning, truth, and an answer to the question about what to do with their lives. The time these Westerners spent with Maharaj-ji became pivotal to how they have lived their lives: Krishna Das became a kirtan master, introducing the West to the sacred names of the divine; Baba Ram Dass became a great spiritual teacher and has written many books about his experiences on the spiritual path; Dr. Larry Brilliant founded the Seva Foundation and set about curing the world of some of its most incurable illnesses; and the list goes on.
Maharaj-ji was incredibly generous with this group of Westerners. As he admits in Jeremy's award-winning documentary, "I gave you more than I gave the Indians." He showed this small band of Westerners a means of tapping into an endless source of compassion and love. Almost as if Maharaj-ji was able to provide these men with something that would fuel and sustain them throughout the rest of their lives. Between inhale, exhale, and one more inch forward in traffic, I wondered what Maharaj-ji's counsel would be about worry. It would no doubt begin and end with a big belly laugh. How did Neem Karoli Baba embrace suffering? What does it look like and feel like to allow a place for the inevitable suffering of our lives? Was Maharaj-ji's big form that Krishna Das waited to witness at the temple at Kainchi really that big?
During Saturday's Yin Yoga class when my teacher talked about the long journey of the breath, I imagined her referring to it--as Krishna Das did of Maharaj-ji--in its biggest form. As in the breath that takes us through our entire lives. Like the vast peaceful presence the Westerners felt with Maharaj-ji. Like complete surrender. The long journey of the breath is a long journey of letting go. Although sometimes the best we can manage is to hold tight. As I did during the long drive to pick up my daughter. When I finally arrived, she was still with her teammates doing follow-up stretches from their run. This was fine by me because it gave me a moment to close my eyes and finally, fully exhale.
I find it interesting that you mention Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. On October 12, I attended a one-woman performance of the book at the Laguna Playhouse. Exiting the theater into the streaming afternoon sun filled me with a sense of uneasiness about the fragility of life. It may sound cliche to say "enjoy each moment as if it's your last," but it's true . . . consider all the people who live their lives full of fear, depression, or anxiety; people who cannot see their way to the "other" side. I often wish I could bottle the physical and mental benefits of yoga and dole out sips to people in need. How wonderful, the ability to change their perspective; to infuse them with hope and a sense of well being; that they may also be able to experience the moment when they close their eyes and finally, fully exhale.
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