Tag Archives: letting go

Home Remodeling as a Metaphor for Life

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You’ve probably picked up on the fact that there has been a lot of remodeling going on at The VeganAsana house lately. We have had both bathrooms redone (picture post re the second one to come soon); painting was done in the kitchen/hall/stairwell; some repairs were made to walls and ceiling in the office, a bedroom, and living room; and the yard was landscaped. As we were working on some of our tasks over the weekend, it occurred to me how much these “creating a home” tasks are like the whole rest of creating a life. I guess that’s not surprising, as all systems share characteristics, but it struck me strongly.

All is imperfect. I find myself often wanting these home remodeling tasks to result in perfection. I want the tiles to be perfect, the paint to be without a streak or a run, the colors to match precisely, the plants to all look green and luscious. Yet, like in all of life, there is no “perfection” in that sense. Some of the plants haven’t done well in the heat, there are spots on the wall where paint clumped or ran, the tiles on this corner of the shower wall weren’t set the same way as the tiles on that corner, there is a scuff on the marble window sill. All of this can drive me to near distraction if I let it.

Gregory Bateson characterized humans as being “rotten with perfection.” Our seeking of perfection in self and other, in things and beings, can lead to pain both personal and global. The drive for perfection can create impossible standards for appearance, behavior, relationships, and abilities. If the ultimate desire for anything is total perfection, nothing will ever reach it. We will constantly be critiquing our relationships, berating ourselves, touching up the paint on the ceiling, or worrying about the grout. The attachment to the idea of the “perfect _____” must be released for our own good and the good of others.

The imperfect can still be just right. During the unfolding of all of these processes, I’ve had to (often with the urging of Mr. VeganAsana) to let go of my fretting about things being exactly so. For example, in the downstairs bathroom the closet door became an issue for a while. It had three hinges before the renovation, but when it was put back only two were replaced, and the opening for the third hinge was filled in. We scraped/chiseled out the fill and tried to replace the hinge, but it no longer set properly and immediately began to separate from the wall, pulling the upper hinge with it. In my worry about it being perfect, I initially thought we would need to replace the entire door, which would have meant a custom door due to the size, and some wait time. So, for the interim, I filled and painted the hinge spaces on both the door and the frame. Weeks later, the “imperfect” door seems just fine.

Worry is suffering over what has not happened yet, and may never happen. Oh, the worrying. I have fretted myself and everyone around me into misery more than once during all of this. On one occasion, I spent an entire night awake worrying about how to approach the contractor regarding some tiles that were incorrectly placed. I created so many scenarios in my head where he didn’t take the news well and it wasn’t good for our working relationship. The next morning, when I broached the topic, he immediately saw the problem, apologized, and started planning the fix. Ten hours of worry for a ten minute conversation; it wasn’t worth it. How many times in a week, in a day, do we do this? It sucks so much energy away from the now to be fussing over what may never occur.

Plan, and then let it go. In home repair and remodeling, as with most things in life, it’s good to have a plan. Without one, it can be even more difficult to get things done. We’ve found ourselves “stuck” a few times in getting this stuff done until we came up with a plan for how to proceed. Even things like bathroom storage require some strategy. But, once the plan is created, it’s important to be willing to let it go. We had planned a towel bar in one bathroom. After it pulled out of the wall, we were in a pickle regarding how to proceed. For now, we’ve decided to let go of that plan and just patched the wall and painted. We had planned a certain glossiness of tile and didn’t get it in one bathroom. Short of having all the tile ripped out, we needed to let it go. In the initial landscaping, there were two more trees than there are now. They didn’t make it. Let it go. Letting go of expectations is an ability that crosses all life domains.

Letting go is a process. As I’ve said in prior posts, I’m not always the best at letting go of things. I try, but it can be a struggle. Across these events, I’ve had to make peace with the fact that it’s not easy for me to let go, and to realize that I can’t do it all at once. It has to happen in bits and pieces. The aforementioned difference in the two corners of the shower tile is bothering me, I cannot deny. I have a preference for one of the two styles, but I would have been ok with either – as long as they matched. But, they don’t. And since we didn’t catch it until after the tiling, grouting, and first round of painting was done, it seems sort of silly to mess with it now, particularly since one of the corners will be bisected by the shower door anyway. However, I’m struggling with letting it go. For now, I’m just trying not to look at it, and that’s the best I can do.

Even somewhat unpleasant tasks can be done with sthira (steadiness) and sukha (ease). I don’t know anyone who loves all the parts of doing home “stuff.” I certainly don’t. Cleaning, sanding, priming, painting – all for ceilings and walls; buying organizational materials and organizing; researching and selecting fixtures – it can all be annoying at times. But, if I try to stay relaxed and just work calmly and steadily, it’s much better. Every time I try to rush through, or i let my annoyance and anxiety bubble up, it all becomes much more unpleasant. This isn’t just psychological. When I do that, I get less mindful, and then problems (dripped paint, dropped brushes, broken outlet covers) start to happen, which cause the task to take longer and be more unpleasant.

They are all good life lessons, in addition to leading to some pretty rooms (and a nice lawn, though I can take no credit at all for that). And that’s how our home repairs and remodels have become part of my yoga in the summer of 2012.

Practice Makes (Im)Perfect – Motherhood and Yoga

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February 2000

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna to focus on his actions, not the fruits of his labor.  As I read this again recently, it made me immediately think about motherhood and how yoga has impacted my mothering.  Maybe it was the word “labor.”  Maybe it was “fruits.”  Or, perhaps it was recent events in my life.  But, in any case, I’m reflecting on the connection between mothering my children (all six of them) and yoga in my head, so I might as well do so here.

I began doing yoga several years ago.  As I’ve said in prior posts, it was first just a physical choice, and only later did it become more philosophical/spiritual for me.  But, from the beginning, I could see changes happening in my mothering, and those changes have only increased as I’ve gotten more committed to my practice.  Some of this has been woven into my increased attention to Buddhist thought as well, so I’m not going to try to separate them out here, as the things I plan to discuss are part of both.

The first really noticeable was less yelling.  I’ve never been much of a “yell for a long time” mom.  But, I certainly wasn’t above yelling – short, but loud – and at some point I had slipped into doing it pretty much every day.  It was bad enough that I actually had an after-school schedule posted on the microwave called the “after-school no yelling plan.”  Some of the yelling after school that I was trying to avoid was children being testy about homework and with each other.  But, a good part of it was me yelling at them (about same homework, arguing with each other, not doing chores, etc.).    I’m not sure how long after I started yoga that it took the yelling to slow down, but I noticed it had when, one day, I did yell at the kids and they all froze in their tracks and looked at me with shock.  Interesting.

The second thing that I noticed was less profanity.  Yep, I’ll admit it.  I sometimes curse when I speak to my children, and even more when I speak around them.  If they know a naughty word before the age of 10, don’t blame their father or schoolmates, because they probably learned it from me.  I don’t actually mind profanity because it’s “bad words.”  But, I do mind the fact that I’m experiencing such anger/frustration that I need to express it that way.  As I did more with my practice, almost without any conscious awareness, the profanity decreased.  Hmmm… also interesting.

At some point, after I started to see these outward changes that were happening through no real thought on my part, I started to pay attention to and more consciously apply what I understood from yoga philosophy to my mothering.  This allowed me to see how the outward changes were a reflection of things going on inside and the way that yoga had changed my own patterns of thinking/feeling/being.  I think this has happened in many ways, so I selected 4 to discuss here (somewhat arbitrarily, because I can think of several more immediately, but eventually this post must end).

Compassion
It might seem that compassion is a natural fit with motherhood, and in some ways I guess it is.  If compassion is to sympathize with the suffering of others, mothers are certainly expected to experience this with their children, and I have.  But looking at compassion from a starting point of yoga philosophy changes it just a little.  From this perspective, our very humanity is suffering.  At humans, we attach to things (people, ideas, outcomes, objects) and, since everything is impermanent, we experience suffering.  Sometimes it’s suffering at the loss of a “thing,” and sometimes it’s at the thought of loss, but it is inevitable.  Thinking about this has helped me to understand and think about both my own experiences and the experiences of my children.  It’s pretty natural to be angry at the pre-teen who is moody and stubborn, but it’s easier to be compassionate with that child when I am able to take her perspective a little more and understand that she is experiencing suffering (loss of baby status, loss of attention from a revered sibling or friend, anticipated loss of “fun” in school), even if her life is pretty nice from an outside viewpoint.  It’s also easy to be frustrated with myself when I am not handling issues with my children in the way that I think I should.  But, as the Buddha said, “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.”  So, I need to have compassion for myself as well.  I need to be ok with my own experiences of suffering, and how they play out in my life, even when they aren’t as “logical” as I want them to be.   For me, in part, this has meant trying to examine my feelings of anger or sadness in my mothering relationship and identify what is going on to create those feelings, without berating myself over it.  When I’m angry because my teen wants to spend New Year’s day with a friend, instead of fussing at myself about irrational anger, I reflect on the idea that my upset is probably more about the loss of a child growing into an adult than anything else.  While it may not make the feeling pass, it allows me to not compound it by also feeling bad about feeling bad.

Equanimity
Things happen – deep, huh?  Every day we go through events that create feelings in us, both those we label as good and those we label as bad.  But, often, we not only go through the feeling, we evaluate the feeling and create responses to it.  The experience of anger can lead to more anger, to guilt, to defensiveness, to sadness, and so on.  The second level of feelings is not about the precipitating event, but the stories we spin out in our minds about our reactions.  We also not only experience feelings related to the events in the present moment, but also to what we think might happen in the future or what we remember has happened in the past.  This is certainly the case with mothering.  I go through a moment with a child (let’s say receiving a report card) and immediately begin to relate it to past and future.  A “good” report card might bring up feelings of happiness and pride as I remember encouraging my pre-schooler to enjoy reading or predict his successful future academic pursuits.  A “bad” report card creates negative evaluations of my own parenting (I should have been more strict about homework time) and predictions of  future problems (she’ll never get into the college she wants).  But what good are such thoughts?  The past is past. I can’t go back now and do anything about it, and I may well not be remember it “correctly” anyway.   The future hasn’t happened yet, so there is no point in fretting over it.  Thinking about it this way allows me to stay more in the moment and more calm, so that I can deal with what is happening right then, without creating a lot of drama that won’t get me (or the kids) anywhere.  I think they like this, because it means shorter lectures.  I’m sure my loving spouse also likes it because it means less general mothering hysteria.

Seeing the Divinity in Others
In general one might think – “Of course you see their divinity, you are their mother.”  But, if you’ll think back on your childhood (or if you are a parent,your relationship with your children) you will probably see that we don’t always see the divinity of our children.  To see the divinity of another asks us not to see them as potentially wonderful or almost amazing, but to see them as currently and always amazing and wonderful.  Again, this isn’t to say that we can’t experience anger with others, but that, even when we do, we can see the divine in them.  This was easy enough for me when my children were babies.  I like babies and I see them as miraculous even when they are red and wrinkled and screaming.  But, as they grow up and become people with mind of their own (that don’t always, or often, agree with mine) it becomes harder.  When the 12 year old is sitting next to you, smelling like the worst sort of arm-pit, clearly not having brushed his teeth today, with stains on his clothes, shoveling food into his mouth like he’s never eaten before, it’s pretty easy to focus on the bad.  When the young adult makes life choices that you feel are poor, or isn’t so fond of showers, or looks like a hairy monkey (just as a random example), it’s pretty easy to focus on the wrong.  But, thinking about things from a yogic standpoint has made it easier for me to stop myself from ruminating on what I view as “wrong” with my children and instead trying to see the divine in each of them at each moment.  Sometimes this means focusing on a particular quality that I really do enjoy (the 12 year old is hilarious, the young adult is brilliant), and sometimes it means remembering that, all behavior aside, they are divine and wonderful and amazing just in their being.  And that helps me to respond to them in a more positive and loving way.

Non-Attachment to the “Fruits”
And now here we are back to the fruits – not that we ever really left the fruits alone.  The concept of non-attachment doesn’t only apply to feelings, but also to outcomes.  When I was preparing for the first child, I read a lot of books (a LOT) that were recommended by the pediatrician.  I studied them carefully and made plans as to what I needed to do as a mother.  I was sure that if I was careful to do it right, I would end up raising children who had a strong work ethic and commitment to education, good self-esteem, and healthy food and exercise habits.  They would grow up to make sound choices about substance use, practice safe sex, not be attached to gender expectations, and have wonderful relationships with others.  They would get along well, be best of friends, and we would have parent-child relationships free of drama and bitterness.  Oh, and they would just generally be physically and mentally healthy, and have good teeth and eyes.  Hold on….  What a minute….  Almost there….  Whew! I just had to wait for that fit of hysterical giggles to pass so I could resume.  The reality is that parents cannot guarantee outcomes based on how they parent.  Sure, there is an impact, but it’s not an impact you can clearly predict.  It’s far more likely that a child will grow up to not be the person that you thought than it is that the child will grow up to be the person you expected.  I know that not everyone (yep, looking at you, Professor Chua – though maybe I’m not since I’ve read reports that the article wasn’t a fair representation of your book) would agree, but I believe it to be true.  It’s a tough truth, but there it is.  Just like with everything else in life, you don’t really know how your efforts will pan out in the end, or what effect they will have on the world as they ripple outward.  So, given that we just don’t know how they will turn out, the best thing to do is to do what you think is best in every given moment and then let it go.  This is hard, but it’s also nice.  It helps me to make parenting choices based on what I think is the best action at that time, and not to be so focused on the future outcomes – “good” or “bad.”

I can’t even pretend (or pretend to pretend) that I can reliably keep all of these principles at the forefront of my mind and observe them in every moment.  And, as I said at the beginning, these aren’t all the ways I think yoga has affected me (others including being more “in the moment,” being in better physical condition, having less general anxiety, feeling better about myself, carving out a space for “me” in my life, and so on).  But, I’m in what I think is a better place with these things now than I was a year, or two years, or four years ago.  And, as with other things, I’m working on it. It has been an unexpected outcome of the yoga journey, but a good one, and I’m grateful for it.  And I’m also grateful for these people that I share my life with and call my children.

Namaste,

L

Letting Go in a Different Way – A New Perspective on Yoga Classes

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The class I observed on Wednesday, and the class that I took today (both excellent classes – thanks Eric and Micki) have me thinking about in class behavior, and my own responses to it…

Many many months ago, I wrote a blog post about yoga “rules.” At the time, I was really thinking more about the big issues of yoga than the smaller “how to just be a good class citizen” kind of rules.  But, I remember that one of the things that had gotten me started on that post was recalling just how much some behavior bothered me back when I first started taking public classes.

Having done all my yoga at home, my first few public classes were quite an eye opener.  The poses were challenging. I had a hard time keeping up.  We were all really close together.  And, some people were just not all that polite.  The lack of politeness ranged from the snotty looks given to new students, to arriving very late and making much commotion setting up, to ringing cell phones, to space infringement, and so on.  I was surprised, having somehow expected yogis to all be very spiritual and “good.”

Over time, I became much more focused on what was happening on my mat, and that helped me to let go of what everyone else was, or wasn’t, doing.  Sure, I still noticed the person who wandered through the room talking loudly when everyone else was in seated meditation, but for the most part, I was in my little zone.  Even when I did notice behavior that I thought wasn’t so cool, it seemed like it wasn’t my issue and that letting it just pass by me was the best course of action (or non-action).

Recently, however, things have changed, because I’m in teacher training.  Suddenly, I’m seeing class from a different angle, both literally (as I observe classes and take my turns doing little mini-teaches in training) and mentally (as I begin to consider what is going on from the position of a teacher).  And, I have found myself newly annoyed by things I thought I had gotten over.  Now when someone comes in late, chats with a neighbor during class, won’t follow instructions, doesn’t maintain space rules, and so on, I feel bothered, not so much from my student position, but from the perspective of a person teaching the class.

To a degree, I suppose this is appropriate and expected, because there will be things that I have to manage as a teacher that I don’t have to as a student.  The pair on the side who just cannot stop chattering will have to be dealt with so that they don’t completely disrupt the practices of everyone else in the room.  The person who is insistent on doing poses in his/her own way but who is actually engaging in risky physical behavior will have to be addressed.

And yet, even from the perspective of a teacher, I will need to be able to let go of some things.  Someone (and maybe the same person many times) is going to be late.  Someone is going to be a little overly enthusiastic with the “sounds of relaxation”  (yeah, you know the sounds I mean).   Someone is going to decide that he/she just needs to do his/her own thing and be unmatched with everyone else for the whole class.  There may always be a little part of me that finds such things bothersome, but I will need to be able to let them go, or risk getting in my own way and thereby disrupting not only my equanimity, but the mood of the practice for everyone.

It’s interesting to see how my perspective and position has evolved over time.  While at first I was ignoring problematic behavior just out of politeness (one way of letting it go), later I was just not really noticing it much due to my focus (a different way of letting go), and now I’m consciously deciding what can be overlooked in the spirit of the positive energy in the room (another way of letting go).  It’s not exactly a fish becoming a mammal, but its certainly my own little evolutionary process 🙂

Namaste,

L