Because I Am

Why am I up again so early in the morning, blogging, getting the kiddo ready for school, helping my husband as he comforts our moody daughter?  

Why am I doing all of this and then heading off to a yoga class where I will sweat, be uncomfortable, and stretch into muscles I didn't even know I had?

A well-lived life may rest in the answers I give to those questions.

 image from vectorjunky.com

If I respond, "Because I have to", life will always be about suffering.  Doing that which supposedly "has to" be done, slugging along every step of the way.  Eventually, things like yoga which won't fall into a have to category, will drop away from daily routine.  Life will cycle more and more into a dark, energy-deprived state of being.

If I respond, "Because I want to", I may bounce along in yoga and feel quite alive, knowing I truly want to be there.  But the facade of that answer will quickly drop away as I admit I (no one) really wants to deal with a screaming child while the head is still partly dreaming and the body not yet fully functional.  Again, life would turn to pushing away the screaming child or anything else that doesn't fit into the "want to" category.

It is almost a spiritual struggle between the human and divine ways of being in this world.  One allows for deep experience of pain, joy, sensuality, and the entire roller coaster of human experience.  The other allows for love, transcendence, blissful being, and the wisdom of the entire realm of being.  To make our lives simply about one or the other, to be confined to or constantly chasing a single way of being, is to cheat ourselves out of the full experience.

"To be human is to live in two worlds.  Our posture, with our head raised to heaven, and our feet planted firmly on the earth, perfectly expresses our dual nature. ... Indeed, we can never fully be present unless we recognize and honor all of who we are, including both our expansiveness and our limitations."  -John Welwood, Ordinary Magic

This is all part of life.  I make the choice to experience it as fully as possible, to dip into the wonders and blessings of my being.

My answer this morning to the above "whys"?  Because I am.

I am blessed to be able to go to yoga, to have a home to return to and food on the plate.  I am a mother, a wife, a self-aware being.  I choose to embrace my expansiveness - to love the "woo-woo" and unicorns.  I choose to swim in my limitations - to acknowledge without judgment our bank account figures and back issues that keep me from full physical range of expression.

Just planting the seed...why will you do what you do when you stop reading this?

Namaste.