Fog

This week, I have to draw my inspiration from the letter F. Well, I don't have to, but that's the challenge I've given myself. Nothing was coming to me, though occasionally the word fog did come to mind. 

I thought of a number of other F words (hey - I'm from Massachusetts and F words are about 90% of our vocabulary), but none of them felt like anything I really wanted to delve into. Polite F words like forgiveness , family, friendship or fortitude seemed too big. Ugh - who wants to delve into all that bigness? 

There was a layer of fog hanging over the pond when I got up this morning. Ahhhh, I thought, a message from the universe. Fog must be the word. 

I took a picture, just so you wouldn't think I made it up about about the fog.

Despite the universe's nudge, I didn't feel inspired to write about fog. My brain felt too tired. That's when another F word came to mind: funk. I think I'm in a little February funk. Last week, I was all bouncy and full of inspiration. I worked on a poem, sent off an article query and taught a workshop. But this week, I got nuthin'. Maybe it's the weather, which suddenly turned warm and humid. I liked our cold spells better. 

Maybe I used all my inspiration last week and need to let the well fill back up. Geez, even that metaphor was dull....

The fog was gone by 9 a.m. I went for a walk, trimmed the Aricas and vacuumed the lanai. All that made me feel less funky, a lot hungry and wanting a nap.

So, there it is., a not very fabulous F post. In an effort to insert a smidge of insight, I'll go with this: It's okay to be in a fog or a funk and not very inspired sometimes. It'll pass.

Expectation

A few days ago, I flipped back through my journal to the entries I made this time last year. It was interesting to revisit what I was thinking about at the start of 2020, and particularly, the expectations  that lay beneath.

My sweet, innocent little journal

I had hopes and a few plans for how I would steer my life and what I would accomplish. Underlying those aspirations was one key expectation: that the foundations of daily life would, more or less, continue as they had been.

By the beginning of March, all of our expectations were out the window. But I think we all hoped, and innocently thought, that the disruption of our daily lives by the pandemic wouldn't last long. A few months and we'd be back to "normal."

Closing in on a year later, we - I - couldn't have been more wrong. Normal is gone. Daily life is completely different. So much has changed. And we're still in it.

As a yoga teacher and long-time practitioner, I practice with and teach the concept of impermanence on a regular basis. It's at the heart of yoga, this idea of coming to accept that, in time, everything changes, everything ends, and something new begins. The practice of not clinging to - or rejecting - what is. The practice of acceptance. But it's an intellectual exercise until something comes along that forces us to really put it into practice - like a pandemic! 

I think back to the many expectations I had for my life - hopes, dreams, plans. I worked hard to make many dreams come true. I implemented many plans quite well. But nothing, not one single thing I had imagined, was as I had expected it would be.

I expected that when I realized my material dreams, I would be happy. I wasn't! 

I expected that my parents would live to a ripe old age, safe and happy in the home they raised us in, and die peacefully in their sleep. I never saw my mother's Alzheimer's or my dad's stroke coming.

When we worried about Dick's health, it was about his heart. His dad died of a heart attack in his early 60's, and Dick had a small one at the age of 49. He's had no heart issues since, but what we never expected was Parkinson's.

2020 may have brought you many changes that have been and remain extremely difficult. Or, it may have caused you to look at how you were living and make changes for the better. Either way, I guarantee your life over the past year was not a bit like what you expected. Mine either.

Once we emerge from the pandemic - which we will, because this too shall pass - I don't think anyone could blame us for wanting to feel "safe" again, even if safe is an illusion. We never know what will happen. So we have to find a way to incorporate our newly heightened awareness of impermanence into how we go about our daily lives, without it being limiting or debilitating.

2020 gave us a lesson in non-attachment and acceptance that we won't soon forget, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I know that I feel a much greater sense of what Pema Chodron calls, "the comings and goings of things." And I am deeply reminded not to take anything for granted.

When thinking about my "E" post, I kept thinking about elephants. In yoga, Ganesha, the elephant god, is the remover of obstacles and the bringer of abundance. So, here's a picture of cute baby elephants and one of Ganesha.

Distance

 For this "D" post, my first thought was "Ducks," because the flock of Whistling Ducks that makes its home on our little pond has entertained and kept us company throughout the pandemic. 

But even though the ducks are delightful, I landed on the word "distance" instead.

For almost a year now, we have been asked to keep our distance from each other. The last time I taught a yoga class in the studio with students present was on Thursday, March 19, 2020. A week later, on the 25th, I taught my first online class from the studio, with no students in the room. Soon after, I began teaching my classes online from home, and that's how it has been ever since.

This is a photo of me ending the last class I taught at the studio on April 2, 2020 - online and alone, except for the owner, Jennifer, out of sight, at a distance, and Anna out at the front desk.

April 2, 2020

At first, our hearts were very tender, as we worried about the future of our studio and our yoga sangha. I had tears when we greeted each other at the start of class - tiny faces on a computer screen, connecting from a distance. And again, at the end, when we said goodby. Overnight, so much had changed. We were suddenly dispersed, each to our homes, many hundreds, even thousands, of miles apart.

But then, some interesting things happened. We continued to show up in front of our computers to teach, and students continued to show up in front of theirs to practice. Snowbirds, who normally would not have been with us in summer, came to our online classes - many every day, often more than once a day. 

One student took classes from Taiwan - when she came to my 7pm ET Restorative class, for her, the next day was dawning on the other side of the world. 

My dear friend, Deirdre, over in Bath, England, whom I haven't seen in person since 2012, made it to class too, despite some technology challenges on both our ends.

With the passage of a bit of time, many of us discovered that we very much enjoy taking classes from the comfort of our homes! I joked that I used to have to be at the studio, all fixed up and ready to go by 9:15 for my 10 a.m. class, but in the new situation, I could have wet hair and still be in jammies at 9:15, but all ready to teach by 9:45. 

My sister in Massachusetts took my class all summer. I called her immediately after each one, because, for once, we knew we'd be available, with time to talk! We live at a distance, but we have never talked as often or felt closer. 

I've talked with my brother more often too, and "seen" several dear friends more often via Zoom than I would see them in person in any given year.

The word distance is a constant drumbeat now with our reference to social-distancing. Being at a distance is hard, even heart-wrenching, for many who long to be in the physical presence of loved ones. But thank heavens for the internet and Zoom and all the other platforms that have allowed us to be together, to see each other's faces and hear each other's voices. 

I do miss being with friends, family, students, and my fellow teachers. But I do not feel now, that there is "distance" between us. In many ways, distance has brought us closer. When we talk, it is without distraction or the time constraint that comes from busy-ness. We listen better, interrupt less, and are much more present with each other from a distance than in person, and that is an interesting thing to think about as the world, does, eventually re-open.

Now, even though distance became the topic for my post, our ducks really are entertaining, so here is a short clip of ducks doing their duck thing on our pond.