Daily Allowance

I just made a killer homemade, sugar-free, dirty chai latte with almond milk (okay, so maybe it was actually with heavy cream because I was out of almond milk.  Sue me. It was delicious).

If it didn't have so much to do today, I'd consider cashing it in on this and calling today a "win."  But as I'm wont to do, I used Yogi tea for the chai portion and, of course, have to consider the snapple-like wisp of wisdom on the little tea bag tab.  In the old days, I had a bunch of those taped everywhere.  Unlike Wendy the Snapple Lady, the Yogi tea wisdoms actually do make me think.

As I sipped on my beautiful, hand-spun latte (this sound so precious...it wasn't...I dunked a tea bag in a cup of coffee...still I was so proud I didn't spend $4) I reflected on:

If you let yourself be successful, you shall be successful.

 I was so ready to write this off.  "Yeah, sure," I could hear my little snarly inner voice growl, "it sounds so easy."  But the truth of it, I think, is that it might be that easy.

There's something very compelling to me personally about "the struggle."  I do value work a lot, so a struggle is awesome because it makes the work visible.  If I'm struggling to do something, I'm not giving up on it: I'm wrestling, sparring, climbing, trekking, slogging.  There's effort there.  And effort, in my book, is always noble.  And I know I'm not alone there.  Many, many of our everyday systems reward effort.  That's the very foundation on which the idea of success, careers, the American Dream, and just any old meritocracy are based.  It's Amurica.

If I go down even further, toward my own person and body in the success-driven place, I know I've internalized the idea of struggle as noble.  I do crazy diets, I've gone on nutso fitness binges, and maybe even sometimes I've OD'd on the idea of a journey to happiness.  (For a while I tried to be chipper.  It was no good.  I'm not built for that).  If I'm walking away from something sweaty and out of breath, chances are I'm a happy camper.

When the belief that the only road to success is struggle to the point it becomes a paradigm for everything, the idea that you might be your own impediment to success can blow. your. mind. I just because I used the fashionable three-word-punctuated-to-sound-like-Oprah-talking shouldn't detract from how uncomfortable that is.  When everything you've done in your life tells you struggle is right, the suggestion that, in fact, allowance can get you to the same ends sounds like complete anarchy.

The problem is, a quick review of the high level goals of my life tells me there could've been another way.  I do believe in some things, the hard road is the right road: becoming compassionate (especially towards oneself), the road to tolerance (true empathy and not just the agreement that in public we'll say something because we'll look really bad if we say something else), love are all very hard.  There will be challenge.  But I guess the question is "Where is the line between challenge and struggle?"  At what point does the effort begin to edge out the challenge as the focus?

Whenever I've been confronted with the idea of allowance and I allow myself to sit with it and truly contemplate it and imagine exactly what it would feel like in my skin, I become very humbled.  In those moments, I can begin to see how my struggle has been perpetrated by me.  In many cases, more than I'd like to admit, I myself  have been the reason I couldn't find what I desired.  I sabotaged, I threw up barriers, I caved in a moment of weakness, I was stubborn and/or stupid and/or not compassionate.  All of these, of course, are born of fear.

So the idea that I hold the key to my success and that I've been the obstacle to that for myself creates so much guilt.  In some senses, I've doomed myself to whatever fate I have that doesn't please me at the moment.  On the other hand, the power I have to exact the changes I hope for myself is overwhelming.  All I need, we need, to find the change we seek is to be able to honestly ask these questions of ourselves.

Do I want happiness?  What does that look like?  Do I want [insert  your dream here]?  What does that look like?  

When those answers are simply "yes," our biggest challenge is to be brave on the path to that.  There will always be challenge and the fruit of stepping up to that will always be worthwhile.  But I'm coming to grips with the fact that struggle need not be necessary.  Simply allowing may be just enough.

Less Tension

This past May, I started playing tennis.

I've played backyard "smashfest" tennis (we'd stand at the baseline and swing away for three hours and hit about 10 shots in bounds) with my brothers before but I have never been serious or systematic about learning the game.  So to get outside more and run around, I grabbed my racquet and signed up for group classes this summer.

And it took only two short months for me to develop horrible, awful tennis elbow.  I've never, ever had that issue in the past but holy cow; had I been smart and listened to my body, I would've been sidelined for awhile.  Instead, I pressed ahead.  It wasn't until early November that I started taking a lesson with a different coach who, within about 12 minutes, said, "Your grip is way too tight.  I bet you're feeling that in your elbow."

Yes, sir.  Yes I was.

The next four lessons, every time I stepped up to the ball, he would say, "Katie, loosen your grip." "Katie your grip is too tight."  "Get loose." "Take a deep breath." "KATIE. LOOSEN. YOUR. GRIP."  For two hours, this mantra played on repeat.  Sometimes I'd get frustrated and completely annoyed. And then, after I realized I was not going to cure this in an hour, I started internalizing it.  It became like a heartbeat.  And when I really concentrated--I mean like beads-of-sweat-forming-on-brow-from-thinking--and I promised myself I would get it all together, and I let go and relaxed...magic. That shot would drop just on that baseline with power but also with finesse.  I think that happened, like, twice.  But in those two times, I could both see and feel the balance, the interplay, of strength and release.  I needed to play tennis to understand yoga.

Because this was such a mantra for those two hours, I found this message appearing to me at other times throughout my day and one day it finally landed as though I had never even heard it before.

 "Katie, loosen your grip.  You're holding on too tight."  

I almost laughed at how obvious the message was, as if the Universe was like, "um, right...I wondered how long it would take you to realize that I wasn't channeling this to you because I think you'll make it big at Wimbledon some day." DUH. Everywhere I looked in my life, I could immediately see tension. And of course I knew it was there all along.  I'm not so unaware of myself that I can't see I'm tied up in knots all the time.  But I was seeing it in a new light; maybe there was another way. Was I worried about things out of my control? Yes.  Was I holding on to anger and frustration about things in the past? Yes.  Was I feeling under-appreciated  without good reason? Yes.  Was I wanting things to be different? Yes.  I mean, like, every nook and cranny of my life had tennis elbow; so much fretting, so much fear.  I was suffocating everything to the point that no day or occurrence or moment had a chance to be seen as joyful or hopeful. And everything was showing signs of the wear and toll of tension.  Like a body gets tight, achy, and generally out of sorts, that's exactly how I felt about life in general; my heart and mind were boxed in, cramped, and struggling to breathe.

This diagnosis for my tennis game was nothing short of revolutionary.  In the moments I was able to let go, I tapped into power and grace that I didn't even know I had at my disposal. But loosening my tennis grip has been one of the steepest challenges I've ever met.  Finding it requires so much quiet, calm patience because gripping your racquet is very much like breathing: fundamental but not necessarily something you ruminate on with every swing.  So now when I approach the ball, I have to think on every shot, "am i gripping too tight? Loosen."  If I don't think it, I am surely gripping too tight.  And Ramon is right there to say, "Katie.  Loosen your grip."  And the only way to cure it is to not get tight when you realize you're not doing it.  This is about changing a response that feels innate.  In life, I know, most of my successes and what I'm known for is my brute strength (I'll push through, I'll get it done, I'm a workhorse.) Now my approach requires that I forge a new path...one that isn't something I'm familiar with.  One that seems very counter-intuitive to the goal.

Loosen.  Loosen.  Stay Loose.  Loose.  Loose. Loose.

And of course, that's true for life too.  To apply this there's a vigilance that I have to choose to maintain.  But the outcome will always be worth it.  I have had few moments of such joy that could equal the times that I hit that tennis ball correctly and see how beautifully graceful that shot is...and it's usually a winner.

I'm just starting to understand what loosen could do for me in my life but it's obvious that it could be a real game-changer there, too.  The mantra has been switched on.  Now it's time to practice.