Maybe
There once was an old farmer whose horse ran away. When his neighbors heard of his plight, they came to offer their condolences, saying how terrible it was for him to lose his horse.
“Maybe,” he replied.
The next day the horse returned with three new wild horses accompanying him. Once again his neighbors let him know what a magnificent turn of events this was.
“Maybe,” he replied.
The next day his son was trying to train one of the new horses and was thrown from his mount, breaking his leg in the process. His neighbors offered their condolences on this tragic accident.
“Maybe,” was all he replied.
The next day military officials came to the village to draft men into service. Upon seeing the injured leg of the farmer’s son, the officials passed him by.
If the neighbors came by to comment on the luck of not being drafted, we can all assume what the farmer’s response would be.
Things have certainly changed over the past few weeks. In truth, I had a different article up and ready to post this month but it seemed kind of odd to not address the current state of the world. And it’s getting pretty……. Interesting out there. I’m not ready to say ‘bad’ just yet. I’m more inclined to take the view of our old farmer and the wait and see approach because this pandemic can be viewed from countless perspectives, none of which are wrong. They’re all just…. Different.
If the news is to be believed, Italy is in a pretty dire predicament at the moment. Last article I read reported that they were bringing in military trucks to remove the dead from a city because they simply couldn’t handle the amount of bodies. The population is being quarantined in their own houses and while singing together from the balconies is certainly a touching scene, it doesn’t offer much hope of the restrictions ending any time soon.
Travel across the pond to the United States and you start to see us sliding in the same direction. However it’s still early, so you have your dissenters and conspiracy theorists. If Tom Hanks is still fine, it must mean that we will all be fine. It’s only going to affect the elderly and the immuno-compromised so it seems like they are taking these quarantine measures a bit far.
Are these thoughts wrong? Or are they just seeing the situation from different vantage points.
It’s hard to say. I’m not sure we will know for a while. Rest assured that if this pandemic starts to take out a larger percentage of the population, there will be people who place blame on the governments who didn’t do enough and the population who did not abide by the recommendations. If we all survive this and things return to normal, there will be those who point to the fall of the economy and how this overreaction ruined lives financially. At this point, neither group would be wrong trying to state their case. Because we don’t know. None of us know.
And yet, we are here. We are all in this together, one way or another. In some ways not knowing what is going to happen has been overwhelmingly freeing. A great portion of the United States has seen just how non-essential parts of their day are as they are stripped away. The schedule of things to do has certainly gotten a lot lighter and I’ll be curious to see what aspects of day-to-day life get laid off permanently. We all must have noticed by now how easy it is to brew coffee at home and when we take a peek at the financials at the end of the month; maybe we’ll reconsider whatever new sugar-filled Starbucks latte we just have to have before work.
It all reminds me of how a fellow yoga teacher once described the spiritual population of L.A.. Out here we’ve got book stores dedicated to the newest self-help books and the oldest most sacred texts. You can buy crystals to ground and jewelry that will liberate. You can brave rush hour traffic to take your favorite 6:00 PM yoga or meditation class. You can read blogs (not unlike this one) from people who have traveled to the far corners of the globe and brought back insights that you can only hope to understand. But the question that my friend asked of all of these teachers and gurus and enlightened beings is this.
“What’s left when you take off all of the jewelry?”
I haven’t worn my earrings, bracelets or rings since this all started. I lost my favorite pair of mala beads with the dragon head power bead. I’ve basically existed in the most comfortable pair of sweatpants that I own and cycle through tank tops and hoodies depending on the time of day. My favorite tank top has all four Ninja Turtles surfing the same wave. My mom got it for me and it makes me smile every time.
But even without the ‘spiritual brand’ I’m still here. I’m still doing the work. I wake up every day and hit my meditation cushion. I’ve been running more, because it brings me a sense of calm. I move my body into positions that don’t have yoga names but still feel like yoga to me. I’ve been writing. Even though without the structure of a day-to-day job, the words feel more jumbled and skewed.
This is going to be a time where you’ve really got to stare down the self. There is nobody telling you what to do and no job stealing forty hours of your week. You can look to your teachers for guidance, support and a sense of regularity, but don’t expect them to appear in the room and save you. But always, always, always remember that you don’t need to be saved.
Things might get a little weird.
So let’s lean into that.
Let’s get weird.
What’s that thing that you said you would do if you only had the time? You’re about to have a whole lot of time on your hands, so why not try it. And if you don’t enjoy it, well then maybe it’s time to revisit the reason you wanted to do it in the first place. You won’t impress anyone with your guitar playing skills or your advanced yoga pose while you’re at home in self-quarantine. So maybe that interest starts to fade away. You won’t be able to go to the best vegan restaurant in the city with all of the freshest ingredients. So maybe you’ll find that a small piece of milk chocolate at the end of the day really brings you pleasure and a strict vegan diet isn’t for you. There will be no sports to cheer for, no concerts to attend and no bars in which to drink. So maybe we will start to find out what it is that you really want to do with your Friday night.
Don’t get me wrong, this is all pretty scary. We all might go broke. We all might get infected. We all might die. I’m afraid.
But at the same time, I don’t want to cling to this notion of what life should and should not be. Maybe this will be the great shift for all of humanity and the history books will remember COVID-19 as the catalyst that drove us to a new way of life. Or maybe it’ll only be that way for you, which still counts!
You won’t get to see the new world if you’re holding so tightly to the old one.
So let it come. Don’t mourn for the loss of something you used to enjoy, but celebrate for the space to evolve into something new. Take off your jewelry piece by piece, and see what’s left.
Maybe you’ll like what you see.
Maybe.
That’s just something I’ve been sitting with…