SAGACITY

I stood in the back of the class at Gloria Steven’s workout studio after leaving the locker room with my kaftan shirt and pants behind in a heap. Front and center, the instructor, who had more energy than I had seen in my lifetime, smiled at me. I was sheared down to my Danskin bodysuit, and my body bent, twisted, and stretched as instructed. At 17, I could touch my nose to my knees like it was second nature. I was young and had lots of room to hold life’s insidious judgements deep inside me.

Today, I can still touch my toes, but my nose stops far from my knees. The flexibility, once in my youthful body, has taken residence in my mind. I miss the old me very much, but the move was necessary because the energy draw on discovering my truth has needed all the help it can get. I am required on the daily to flex my thinking about age, money, career, relationships, and lifestyle. These subjects sometimes stand in front of me all at once, which makes for a very crowded space.

Back in the day, my heart would soar when someone smiled at me like that instructor at the workout studio. The smile meant someone thought I was doing something right and my goal was to simply please everyone, not including myself. I still remember the yoga teacher that pointed me out to the class as an example of what the perfect pose looked like. And there was the professor in college that told the small cohort they should all ask to read my paper. All external examples that fed my heart with notability.

My thoughts about the way life should be have changed as the calendar days evaporate into memory. I have a greater understanding about some things and understand I know nothing about others. Recently, I watched Barbra Streisand in an interview to promote her new memoir. She made a comment that she “hadn’t had much fun” in her life. Here is a beautiful, successful woman whose existence looks very significant from where I sit, and yet, something so basic as fun, has escaped her.  The star of Funny Girl was actually not having fun?  This remark struck my soul like a match.

Barbra and I share the stage with this epiphany. We are similar souls who have taken life in a contemplative manner.  I have a lot of stories, but if I try to think of a funny one, I come up empty. So, in my year of flexible thinking, I will try to make some room for joy to spring eternal from none other than the depths of my very own being. Finding the unorthodoxies in life is where a lot of the joy hides. Humor can be found in our failures. It is when you feel like a chef and you’re crushing garlic, you’re searing the steak, spilling the sauce over what you believe to be the perfect medium well, and you forget what else you put inside that pan of promise, but in the end, it was so terrible, the children couldn’t eat it, and to add salt to the wound, the 50-pound beagle/husky turned up her nose and left the mishmash in her bowl completely untouched. True story. The dog ate her regular bagged meal with a mixture of canned, and we had pizza, so everyone did end up happy, and yes, we still laugh about this.

Judgement from others is not always negative and the rush you feel from an approving nod is not always best for you. The ability to find the compliment inside yourself while in the imperfect moments is the new stellar. It doesn’t mean not to try to perfect the pose or the paper.  Maybe the fun is the lightness. Maybe chasing the approval of others has caused so much seriousness in your life that it buried the laugh. This is where age and wisdom has brought me.

I have had the experience recently that nothing was as it seemed. It has forced me to relearn life and it is just as painful, if not worse, than the angst I had as a teen. Afterall, I did believe I had at least 60 years ahead of me to make things right. I obviously don’t have that kind of time anymore. There are expectations, which is a word that welcomes judgement. It takes a lot of grit to push back against it and there are a lot of days I’m thankful no one can see the delivery. It’s not pretty and it’s slow. In order to advance out of the undesirable state, it’s necessary to renounce the clever way perfection comes to flood my being.

We know that two things can be true at once. We can feel sloth-like and still climb that mountain, we can feel sad and relieved, we can feel joy and fear. Which one will you let dominate? The choice is our own and although we can draw on a friend’s advocacy, the vibe has to erupt from our own motivating force, or the experience will be too weak to render any true growth to propel us forward. Our reward for a job well done is that big, full feeling that permeates our self and glows out into the world. You know you’ve tapped into it when you feel it.

When I was about 13, I went for a walk with my youngest sister. I told her I was upset that someone had told me I looked unhappy when in fact, I was feeling very happy. Without wasting a second, she said, “You were smiling on the inside.”   Her tone implied that she was taken back that it was silly for anyone to make a judgement like that, but more importantly, she seemed puzzled as to why someone saying I looked serious would seriously affect me.  This is really the essence of owning your own self-worth.

Starting fresh has its perks. As you release yourself from the couch, you see a world that is open to you. You discover you are not your grandmother or your mother or the person other people want you to be. You find agency. You are free.  It is not enough to walk through gray days and melancholy. You will succeed and fall, and sometimes, both will happen on the same day. You will be a blueprint for someone else just waking up from a bad time and you won’t even know you made that difference. Most importantly, you have kept the resolution to yourself that you will continue to trudge through this life on the beam that you see when you look in the mirror.

I’m adjusting to this new day. It is January. A brand-new year and opportunity to create. I will remember to wisely choose and build minimal limitations. I will remember that my time here is all mine, minute by minute, and I’ll be grateful for the days that tick by slowly. I will realize that the reason behind judgements, whether my own or from others, is the thing to be questioned – not my ability to people please. And Barb, we’re going to find the fun this year, yes? I just might go to a yoga class, slip on a pair of Calvin Klein jeans, splash a little Windsong behind my ears and dance.