here I go again

You know that feeling when you say something you really you wish you hadn’t said, and you want to crawl into a hole?

Like that time when I was about 16 years old and working as a busgirl. One of the waitresses mentioned during prep smalltalk that her 2-year old daughter drinks tons of Gatorade. I didn’t know her very well but I admired her and my brain was ready to step in and add to the conversation.

I had heard a rumor just days before, not in a peer-reviewed journal article, but from a friend who had heard from a friend, that Gatorade causes cancer. So I responded with my new-found, super-trustworthy and poignant knowledge.

Here is the awful part: just as I heard the words coming out of my mouth in slow motion, “Gatorade causes can-cerrr……” I remembered that someone had mentioned that this particular wattress’ daughter suffers from a rare form of childhood cancer. In fact, the restaurant where we worked was holding a fundraiser to help pay for the treatment.

I felt like such an asshole. She was gracious and didn’t say anything or make me feel any worse; but I felt like a stupid, stupid jerk. For many years after that date, I would think about that moment and berate myself and cringe. Why did I say that? I say such stupid shit sometimes!

I have been feeling that cringe-y feeling consistently since writing my last amazing and magnificent blog. It seems I am attracting situations where I say something or do something out of my comfort zone, and my brain keeps playing the moments over again to remind me, and I guess train (?) me not to do it again.

Only I am failing at the training because I keep doing and saying more things that make me uncomfortable. And I am realizing that by putting myself out there, out of my comfort zone with my words and actions, I am living my most magical and wonderful life.

I didn’t realize until last week how much I had been avoiding that feeling of discomfort and  vulnerability.

So I’ve been sitting with it, rather than avoiding it. In the past, I tried my best to live in a way where I didn’t put myself out there; to avoid feeling it. I think avoiding those hard feelings is human nature. We like to come up with distractions to keep us from really feeling our feelings.

(Candy Crush doesn’t count - feel free to send lives and extra moves).

Louis C.K. recently talked about this tendency to avoid, and the beauty that lies in allowing ourselves to really feel our feelings:

I was in my car one time and a Bruce Springsteen song comes on. … I heard it and it gave me a fall, back-to-school depression feeling. It made me really sad, and I go, OK, I’m getting sad. I’ve got to get the phone and write ‘Hi’ to 50 people. … I started to get that sad feeling and I was going to reach for the phone, and I said, ‘You know what, don’t. Just be sad. Just let the sadness stand in the way of it. And let it hit you like a truck.’

I pulled over and I just cried like a bitch. I cried so much and it was beautiful. It was like this beautiful… it was just this… sadness is poetic. You’re lucky to live sad moments. And then I had happy feelings because when you let yourself feel sad your body has antibodies. It has happiness rushing in to meet the sadness. I was grateful to feel sad and then I met it with true, profound happiness. It was such a trip, you know?

The thing is because we don’t want that first bit of sad, we push it away…

I have pushed away my own uncomfortable feelings for a long time. I am seeing now how my avoidance of that feeling of discomfort and vulnerability has been standing in the way of my magnificence. I have been afraid to shine  because of the fear of putting myself out there and being rejected.  

And I think the positive response to my last blog is fucking with me a bit. Let’s face it, y’all probably aren’t all going to love everything I write or say all of the time. I have to be able to sit with that or I am going to miss out on the trove of riches that lay beyond that feeling of discomfort.

By that I mean, I believe that we are here on Earth as part of a personal journey of growth and evolution. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate.”

We are here to find and heed to our individual quest, to find our personal treasure trove and be the best version of ourselves that we can be; we are here to grow and evolve and learn. By going deep into those parts of ourselves we avoid, deep into those unpleasant feelings of fear, sadness, discomfort, and vulnerability, we can unlock and uncover our individual magnificence.

Joseph Campbell, also speaking of this individual journey, said, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” 

That cave is a metaphor for our own hearts. We must be willing to go deep into the parts of ourselves we fear and avoid and uncover the brilliance that lies underneath.

Check out my new and improved website: www.theyogalawyer.com

#pokerpro #yogalawyer #jedi #kalidasheart #kalidas #kelliHastings #yoga #Emerson