Sunday, July 5, 2015

....the barometric pressure of life

Yogis,
I find a vacation to be one of the best barometers of life……..
When we are in our day to day lives, we are usually so entwined that we just keep moving with its flow.  No time to step back.  No time to observe.  Very little ability to make tweaks.   Each activity leads to the next, and each day leads to the one after.  A continuous stream of “doing”.

But then we throw in a vacation.  A step away. 

A vacation is like the pause between breaths.  Our “normal” life stops.  We play, we relax, we eat, we sleep.  But knowing full well that just like the next inhale…..life will come flowing back in.  But should it be somehow different?  Are any adjustments needed?

The barometer comes into action during that last day of vacation and on the trip back home.  As we pack our bags we realize we are heading back into our lives as we left them.  We get this sudden view from afar of what our lives have become.  The barometer gives us a pretty accurate reading on how we are doing.

Am I  heading back with dread with a reading of stormy?  Of the job, of the house, of the routine, of an unresolved hurt?  Or am I anxious to get back and settle in.  Have I noticed that something coming up on the calendar is exactly what should be there, or does the needle point to change where I now see that it has to go?  Am I excited, sad or maybe a pressure of fair, resigned to what is ahead as just "how things are".  Did the vacation feel like an adventure where my life seems stuck in a rut?  Or do I yearn to return to the daily rituals that feed my soul.

I clearly remember some vacations when the boys were young.  Spending chunks of time with them.  Relaxed, no homework, no to dos.  And then driving home with a pit in my stomach knowing that the next day I would be heading back in rush hour to my 9 to 5 job and leaving them behind.  I would cry as I walked the beach alone the night before heading home.  It wasn’t that my life was bad, it was just that it stirred up the emotions of not being there with them during the day.  Rainy.   It would spur me to be more present when I was with them in the evenings and weekends.  The vacation would put what was important back into the spotlight.

The complete flip side is rushing through the vacation in order to get back home.  A sense of dread - not of going home, but of going on vacation.  Uncomfortable with a change of routine and that sense that the world back home will collapse without us.  Unsettled.  A little too attached.  Perhaps not wanting to have that pause to observe of what has become, for fear of what we may see. 

A vacation is similar to the third eye.  Detaching in order to observe what is real.  What is there.  Noticing what fits and what clearly doesn’t any longer. 

My drive home this weekend was filled with wanting to say hi to my plants and getting back to classes.  Right now I love my vacations, but I also love returning to my house.  I miss it when I am gone.  I miss my food, my practice and the smells and sounds out my window at night.  To me that says the barometer on life right now is reading “sunny” for me.

But who knows what reading my next vacation with reveal.  Fair?  Stormy?  I will watch and see if the needle has shifted……and will make changes if need be. 

Settling back in,
SARAH

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