Detaching

No, I still have done no yoga this week yet.  Well, not asanas.  I've been deep into reflection this week for sure. And I can feel the usual rise of guilt mixed with a little exhilaration at the fact that I'm breaking a rule.

Sidebar: When did that love of thumbing it to the rules kick in?  As a kid, I was the best rule lover, the most ardent rule follower of all time.  I loved me a rule.  Alright, if I'm being very deeply self-reflective, I still love rules and I know this because when other people break them it drives me insane.  Yet, somehow, I love the temptation of breaking a rule.  Maybe now I'm just a rule lover with a deep core of not following rules.  I think the day you realize rules are created by idiots just like you, the less it seems imperative to bend to them. Sidebar done.

Despite not physically practicing, what has surprised me is how much past yoga clings if you let it.  Though I've been resisting the physical practice (I'll need to dig more into that later...I'm still not so sure why that's such a problem for me), I'm noticing that I'm still practicing yoga in other ways.

Which brings me to detachment.

This is one of those ideals in Buddhism (and probably not something you'll find in your local Core Power class) that I find, at the same time, to be inspiring and perplexing with an ever so faint aroma of sadness.  We can all understand that detachment is ideal when you have to figure out how to not hold on to negative things in life.  "Like water off a duck's back," we might be inclined to say and that's truly what it is.  Don't engage it and if engaged in it, let it go.

I found myself reflexively practicing this this morning as I was making my way through a package of clothes I had ordered from that once great store, The Gap.  Shit was just not fitting.  In the past, this experience has completely wrecked my outlook on life for days (or maybe weeks) at a time.  "THE SIZES ARE ALL THE SAME AS THE ONES I OWN!!! HOW CAN I NOT GET THESE PANTS EVEN PAST MY KNEES???" I have wailed to myself in anguish right before doing a landscape scan of all the places I could get a donut I could consult about this horror.  Not good for mental (or physical) health.  So this morning, as the same goddamn thing was happening, I had to remind myself of what a huge win it was that my first reaction to the situation was almost neutral.  These don't fit.  They have to go back. No pain, no anguish, no derailing.  It was what it was and that was neither good nor bad...it just was. 

A win prior to 9am.  Always a win for me.

We can easily see how this practice is desirable.  It keeps us nimble, it allows us to truly flow with whatever life will send your way.  Even though it's an over-used word, I think this is awesome in it's literal sense.  The ability to move with life and not always in a counterpuntal reaction to it is an incredible gift.  Where I find myself challenged and maybe saddened by it a little is when it applies to things almost overly positive in life.  This same idea of detachment should apply to those moments when you feel most splendidly in love, satisfied, fulfilled, content.  Just as we can't hold on the the negative too closely, allowing it space in order to engage with it appropriately, we cannot become too enamored with the positive.  We need space there too.

I found myself struggling with this in the past week.  In my life I've had incredibly close friends for periods of time.  In those, there have been wonderful moments I would never trade.  But inevitably, these do not last and when things seem to come crashing down, I am devastated by them.  We might consider this a normal pattern but "normal" and "healthy" are not the same thing. Nor are "normal" and "ideal."  In each of these cases, I now see in hindsight, a little detachment would've gone a long way.

So, this past week, I caught myself gripping so hard at one of my friendships.  It was almost an actually destructive gripping.  It turned me inside out, making myself miserable (and I'm sure I was awesome to deal with as a result...see, bad use of "awesome" right there).  Finally, some tiny, breathy little voice from deep within me said, exhausted, "Katie, just let go of it.  It's not going to play out as you want it to.  Change the perspective.  Change the approach.  Do something other than you're doing now...which is slowly killing you." I grudgingly re-routed my approach (and I'm serious on the grudging...I was very unhappy about having to be the one who bent).  It was the right thing to do.  It made me see that my anger, frustration, and hurt really had nothing to do with my friend and everything to do with my own little orphan taking over (see my last post about yoga and hip opening...my orphan lives in my hips, I swear).

I needed to detach before I could see the forest for the trees.  It wasn't easy.  It never gets easier.

Detachment is one of those things that I'll always chase after (and I'm certainly not the only one).  I do think it's a worthwhile chase, though.  Even if I never master it (and I probably won't), the process of trying can only be valuable.