The other night at our Book Club, there was a discussion question about how a character realized that in order to truly experience peace in life, something has to give: your expectations or your circumstances. The character stated that once she came to this realization, in an area of her life, she felt truly liberated.
Another way to look at this, that I’ve often shared when teaching yoga, is that that gap between our reality and our expectations is truly “self-imposed suffering.” When things in life are one way and we want them to be another way…we suffer. If we are incessantly using the phrase…”I wish” or thinking to ourselves how “should it be,” we are just tormenting ourselves.
I know that all of us, myself included, can be guilty of looking at someone else’s life, be it on social media or just through our interactions with others and think they’ve got it all figured out. But the more I actually get to know others at a deeper level, the more I realize that we all have gaps in our lives. We all have areas in our lives where we are in one place and want to be somewhere else. Maybe it’s your weight, your health or your age. Maybe it’s not where you expected to be in a relationship with your spouse, your friend or your child. Regardless, the more we can allow ourselves to let go of our expectations and say to ourselves…this is how it actually is…and be ok with it…the more fulfillment we will find in life.
So I challenge all of us as a BL community to work at bridging that gap between our expectations and our reality. To encourage one another when chatting in the Link…to get on our yoga mats and practice just being where we are. You will undoubtedly find great peace when you don’t have to have it all figured out…when you can let go of how it should be and just be ok with how it is…when you can accept you and your life as being Perfectly Imperfect!!
Oh and by the way, next Book Club is Thursday, May 19th. Book is Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Would love to have you join us!!
