Happy Valentine's Day!
Yes, the topic is love…..February seems to do that to us or at least we take a deeper notice of this concept of L-O-V-E. Our yoga practice helps us to embrace ourselves, to love ourselves more and in return we can love others more deeply and more compassionately.
There are few situations in life that instantly bring everything into sharp focus. It’s usually a birth, death, celebration, tragedy – an unexpected or impossible event. Something so big that it causes you to re-calibrate everything you know to be true. The bright flood lights that show you what matters most: who you wish you told you were sorry, who you wish you would have said 'I love you' to more often, who you wish you spent time with, and what you wish you could change.
It shouldn’t be just these events that bring out this awareness. It should be something we can access when we take life for granted. When we are annoyed, dissatisfied, petty. The times we are hurtful and punishing. When we get mad at traffic. When we complain about a wrong order. Nothing matters more in life than having health and happiness, and the health and happiness of those you love. If you have those things, you are the luckiest person in the world. Money means nothing in the face of that. It has no value except for its value as it relates to those things.
It’s hard to feel that way when your having a crappy day or month or year or five years. BUT….. wherever you are in life, you have things to be grateful for. Sometimes I write a list of those things so that I can be truly aware of the good in my life. Even the small or seemingly frivolous things en masse add up to be great. The majority of my list is always the people I have in my life. I am so, so grateful to have them all and I hope to never waste a second with them that could be savored. I hope they always know what they mean to me, and that I love them, and how much.
It is scary to put your innermost feelings out there sometimes, but when we do we can free fall, full of grace, into the love of our God and trust that those we love….who truly love us….will catch us and love us, perfect in our own mess, just as God loves them: Perfectly and honestly. Reaching out may the hardest thing to do so I challenge all of us to reach out, say I LOVE YOU, and capture the benefits it promises. We are created for relationships and so much of today's pace and technology takes us away from that--it cocoons us--so we don't have to interact, we don't have to be face to face. We text when we could talk. We Facebook and email when we could meet face to face. Reach out and TOUCH someone when you are talking to them: physically, emotionally, and soulfully connect! We thrived on it as children so what makes us think we don't now?
Today I invite you to ponder this piece of your life and let it make you happy for all that is good. Celebrate your friends, your spouse, your parents, your children, your neighbor, your boss, your sister, niece, grandfather, the checker you see every week at the grocery store. If there’s a person you’ve been thinking about, but haven’t talked to in a while or a person you talk to all the time, but you just haven’t told them how you feel-- reach out today!!
Life is precious and fragile, and it is a gift that we have all been given. Let us remember that today. Let us also remember that love is a gift from God and we are called to pass that on to ALL others. Not just the ones WE love, but ALL others….yes, even those we don't like very much--it is the taking and giving of our yoga practice!
Let's get to it! ONE LOVE….pass it on!
