When I first got married almost 30 years ago, I was the kind of person who was always early to arrive at meetings, events etc. I was always in a rush. There was too much to do so I had to move fast.
I still believe we should be on time for appointments, simply out of respect for the other person.
However, today there are two words I am actively trying to cut out of my vocabulary. “Hurry up.”
This business about always doing things quickly, in a rush, has brought me from the age of 16, to 54, in the blink of an eye. I got married the day before yesterday. My boys were babies just yesterday. I rushed through full-time work, carpools, getting homework and baths done, making dinners and organizing birthday parties. Always feeling “short of time,” I rushed through every activity and in a rushed minute, here we are 30 years later.
Yoga asks us to practice being present. To let go of the weight of what happened yesterday, and to avoid creating an image, an expected reality, of what tomorrow will bring. As I’ve said in previous posts about other tough concepts, it ain’t easy. It takes practice. But 2017 is the year of living with intention. Taking back our power. Realizing that we alone are in charge. There is nothing and no one else to blame.
The small change that I’ve chosen to implement is to stop myself from saying “hurry up” in my head, while I’m doing something. I don’t want to hurry. In the grand scheme of life, there usually is no need to hurry. I know that everything won’t get done today and I’m OK with that. My “to-do” list is a living, breathing, changing list. It’s a mirror of my life, whereby I add important things to the list every day, and leave others to fall to the bottom of the list.
In yoga, the beauty (for me) is “arriving” into a pose. If you move slowly, you’ll feel things in your body, that you wouldn’t feel, or worse, might ignore, if you were moving quickly. At this stage, I want to feel every little part of the deconstructed yoga pose.
On or off the mat… I will not “hurry up.” ♥
Fun fact: the picture above is of a sculpture by German-born, Israeli artist Frank Meisler that my father bought for me about 25 years ago. If you look closely, it portrays a woman on the run, wearing one running shoe and one high heeled shoe. She’s on a skateboard, holding a briefcase in one hand, a bag with food in the other, has a baby hanging onto her, a cell phone in her left ear, and a computer built into her backside! My dad, may he rest in peace, told me that it reminded him of me. Those were the days of always being in a rush.