I Don’t Have Time For Yoga

And my mind won’t settle down to meditate.

What is left for the anxious and uninspired?

Looking Outward.  

It’s easy to devolve into a negative thought cycle.  So many thoughts racing to be foremost in our hamster-wheel brains.

Money (or lack thereof)

Children (and their never-ending needs)

Work (angry clients, demanding managers, commute times, toxic colleagues)

Family (aging parents, sick spouses, and long standing resentments between siblings and in-laws are just a few of the things I see while working at the funeral home)

Friends (the family of our choosing – when we can make time for them)

Cellphones that have become the 5th (6th?) appendage on our bodies: texts and emails that demand immediate responses.

There is never enough of the good in our lives and too much of the bad.

It’s taken ten years and two hospital stays for me to figure out the antidote.

Kindness.

A thoughtful gesture will put you in a better frame of mind than all the asanas and ohms in the universe.

Looking OUTWARD focuses our minds on what is surrounding us, instead of what is immediately in front of us.

Surrounding each of us is a community of need.  A community of people caught up looking inward (and at their cellphones).

Who are they?  

They are:

The neighbour who is looking after a sick parent and two young children

The single mother who has a cold

The nursing home resident who never gets a visitor

The receptionist at work who hasn’t had a bathroom break in three hours

The check-out clerk who has REALLY checked-out because every customer has had a complaint of some kind.

Can you cure the ills of the world?

Nope.

But brightening someone’s day in even the smallest of ways has a boomerang effect.  While it will make them smile, you will carry the high for days.  

Good shit I did this week: Sent a handwritten thank you note to a person who gave our son a bike.  I love getting cards in the mail.  Hopefully they will too.