Ch-Ch-Ch-Choices...

to see this photo in all its glory, go here.

I walked two miles the other day to get to a yoga class, as our car is in the shop and we're not getting a rental for a couple days...I wasn't going to do it, but I looked on the schedule and one of my favorite teachers was unexpectedly teaching a long class, so I put on my walkin' shoes and went on my merry way.

Let me just say, having recently experienced a walk across all of Los Angeles and now this mini walk from my house to my yoga studio--LA is NOT built for walkers.  It's just not.  There are crosswalks that span six lane intersections that give you 20 seconds to cross the street, there are big chunks of roadway with sidewalks only on one side of the street, there are pedestrian lights that never change...it's a sucky place to try and be a walker.  I was so annoyed at one point during my walk yesterday that I started writing an angry letter to the city in my head, though luckily I stopped myself halfway through the composition of it with visions of myself old and angry and taking it out on a typewriter in a dark room somewhere, "Letter to the Editor: I hate everything.  Love, Lia."

(The above falls into the coveted category of My. Worst. Nightmares.)

Anyhow, I get to the studio and my aforementioned favorite teacher, for whom I just walked two miles (two and a quarter if you count all the stupid detours I had to make to stay on actual sidewalks) WASN'T THERE!! Argh!! I was tempted, people, though I have railed against it in the past, I was tempted not to go.  But there was no way I was making that walk for nothing!

So, I went.

And let me say this...the sub was really lovely, a newer teacher but great, really passionate and sweet and welcoming, but for whatever reason I was just...not in the mood.

I wanted something familiar, I wanted the teacher I expected, I wanted to be able to sort of disappear into the class instead of, as it can happen with subs, to help hold up the class with them.  And I found that all through class I was sort of fighting myself, going off into these long deep spirals of thought and then swimming my way back to the surface again, coming up just long enough to get some air, to be in the room, and then diving back down.  And every so often I would think to myself...get in the room, Lia, just be in the room.

And for just a moment I would acknowledge the sanity of that--yes, I will probably feel better/be happier/move more deftly if I just decide to be where I am.  But, I just...couldn't.

Or, rather...I WOULDN'T.

Because I DO have a choice.  I know that now in ways I once did not.  I do have a choice.  Even when I feel like I am rotten and everything else is rotten and there's no way I could ever see anything as anything other than rotten...I know that I can.  I know that it's my choice whether I drop it or hold on tight.  It's my choice whether I indulge and dwell or whether I breathe and release.  It's my choice--and it was my choice in that moment--to either place my full attention on my body and my breath and the class in front of me, or to keep it where it was, deep in the muck.

Even to stay stuck is a choice--it's a sucky choice, most likely almost always for sure most definitely the WRONG choice...but it's a choice.  And I think what can be difficult is that, in those moments of choice, in those moment-to-moment how am I going to choose to walk through the world today choices, we are totally alone.  We are the final arbiter.  The big decision maker.  And there is no one or no thing on the outside that is ever going to be able to make that choice for us. And so sometimes it can be scary...to choose freedom, presence, happiness...it can feel irresponsible or vulnerable or somehow untethered.

But I am here to tell you, Shanti Towners, it's not.  And I am officially giving you my utter and full permission to make the right choice, the one that makes you breathe a sigh of relief...the one that sends thrills of peace down your backbone...I promise it will all be okay.