25 January 2008

The Checkout Lane

Sometimes I say I want to "checkout", and by checkout I mean, not drive my ass to my office job 5 days a week, not fill my gas tank up with gazzzzoline, not shop at Target, all that rhetorical ballyhoo I throw around. Chad and I talk about it a lot as do Lindsay and I. It's not that I hate my life, or hate people or even my job for that matter. But there's an inherent dissatisfaction with doing work that sits you at a desk all day long (like duh, this isn't new or anything), and I feel it especially because what I would love to do is spend my days at a yoga studio or at least in an environment that fosters holistic health, say, oh...a nice commune in Hawaii?? I think, "oh it would be sooo much easier to live the life I want to live if the weather were nicer, or I didn't have to work in an office, or if I could just do yoga all day long", but really, this life IS my yoga.

My daily life gives me an opportunity to practice yoga all the time (we're not talking asanas , more like Bhakti yoga or even sometimes Jnana yoga for instance). Say this morning, while driving to work - there's a ton of construction near my job right now and getting to work sometimes entails navigating Bobcats and cement mixers both of which have a propensity of move very slowly. I get behind one and am of course, irritated.

Why though? Am I in a hurry to get to this desk I hate sitting at? No. Is someone clocking me in? No. So what's the rush? Why the irritation? OR, also this morning this sloppy chick in a raggedy SUV totally cut me off, and I was really ticked, and then something amazing happened. Ok, not amazing, but let's say...pretty neat, something pretty neat happened; she moved back into her lane and then I was next to her, I looked over at her and she looked puffy and haggard and instead of being mad at her, I felt ACTUAL compassion! Not *sad* for her, but real compassion! And then I thought - "Yay! I'm GETTING it!"

1 comment:

Marilyn P. Sushi said...

Oh it's like you're reading my mind!! Very good observation with the SUV driver. I try to put my mind in that place too when a stranger irritates me. Its a work in progress.