Family, friends, and neighbors – love – make us stronger.
And, yet, sometimes when bad shit happens, we just want to curl up under a comfy duvet with a good book, ignore the phone, ignore all the things we know will make us feel better, and WALLOW. Does it make anything better? Nope. Does it at all change the bad shit? Unh unh. Not a bit. Do we know it’s counter-productive even at the very minute we’re doing it? Yep. But there it is. We’ve all been there.
So I’ve had an image of myself for a very long time. Maybe since I was seven years old. Dysfunctional family. I’m the youngest. Given/took on lots of responsibility from the age of seven. I’m not complaining. It was quite empowering. It was a process that has served me well all my life. And as I aged that image stuck with me. Healthier and more flexible than my cohorts. Quicker, more energetic, more adventurous. Sure, my body was creaky and achy in the morning, but it didn’t prevent me from doing all the stuff I wanted to do.
And then…Polymyalgia Rheumatica. Otherwise known as WAKE UP CALL.
One day teaching six yoga classes a week and driving all over tarnation to visit grandkids. The next day taking 20 minutes to get dressed using strategies that would make a contortionist proud. Legs didn’t lift on their own. Shoulders didn’t rotate on their own; or otherwise.And the pain? We won’t even go there.
Two weeks of that. Googling MS, ALS, and every other dire possibility. To be honest, I didn’t really wallow all that much. Scared myself silly but not a lot of wallowing. A few minutes every morning when I contemplated maneuvering myself out of bed. Sometimes in the middle of the night when the pain of turning over in bed woke me up.
But, here’s the thing. Not just writing a post to rehash the last one.
All those things above that we all know? They’re all true! And they add up to another thing we all know about – resilience. The capacity to recover from difficulties; the ability to spring back; elasticity.
After two weeks, I received a diagnosis and could take MS and ALS off the table (whew!). Uncertainty is such a basic and inevitable part of life, but sometimes it’s more challenging than others. Weird as it sounds, I made my peace with dire diagnoses and death during those two weeks. Glad I can pack them away for now but also glad to have done the work.
All my life I’ve been super careful about medications and medical interventions in general. Recreational drugs are one thing. Drugs that ruin your liver, lead to dialysis, or send you out into the streets looking for opioids are another. Aches and pains? One ibuprofen, maybe a couple of times a week. Torn meniscus? No surgery for me; I’ll treat it with yoga, thank you very much.
So here’s reality staring me in the face in the form of steroids. Steroids! Yikes – the boogeyman of medications. They eat away at your bones. Lead to mood swings. Water retention. Moon face. Can cause skyrocketing sugar levels.
On one side, all those side effects and a lifetime of avoiding medical intervention. On the other side decreased pain and increased mobility.
Not even close.
It won’t last forever. I’m relishing in every minute of walking, slowly, carefully, avoiding stairs, in the glorious autumn weather. Sure, the steroids make sleep elusive but on the 3rd night when I’m so exhausted that I actually sleep for 4 or 5 hours straight, wow!, living takes on a new meaning. I hired a cheerful, energetic cook, to free up my good hours for other things and happily peruse the refrigerator feeling like I live in a restaurant.
I can laugh at the list of 11 medical appointments coming up over the next 5 weeks. Hell, I can laugh at anything.
In Buddhist philosophy, there are lots and lots of lists. One of them is a list of five obstacles. The fifth is considered the most difficult. The fifth is doubt.
I spent a bunch of time during that first two weeks, and occasionally during the past week as well, standing, huffing and puffing, in front of that fifth obstacle. Taking deep breaths. Gauging its height. I gathered 20 years of dharma talks and yoga poses and psychology books, the love and support of family, friends, students, and neighbors, the lessons of my own strength and possibilities learned early in my dysfunctional home, the belief in the meaning of life and God’s plan, took a running leap and now find myself on the other side of doubt.
It’s a tricky disease, this Polymyalgia Rheumatic. Some people are on steroids for a year and wean off them and are fine – maybe an occasional flareup. Some people are on a low dose of steroids for years, or until they die (of something else).
I have good days and not-so-great days. I take advantage of all those things we know. I thank goddess for resilience. And I invite doubt for a nice Indian tea from time to time.
I thought I knew about aging. After all, I turned 60 a full decade ago. In kindness to my knees, I stopped teaching hip hop and aerobics. Took up yoga instead. Out of kindness to my brain, I became more selective about the books I read and the movies I see. Out of kindness to my heart, I stopped following the news. Out of awareness of the generation gap and changing society, I became more curious about how my grown children were making child-rearing and professional decisions and less opinionated about all that.
I thought my practice of acceptance of the aging process in so many areas was pretty admirable.
Aching knees, varying levels of lower back pain, a 15-year acquaintance with sleep problems, sight issues.
Check, check, check, and check – all accepted graciously.
I think of myself as an optimist but not disconnected from reality. I realize that sickness and death are inevitable. Looking around me at friends with cancer, MS, joint replacements, and a general decrease in energy, I sometimes wondered what awaited me…specifically.
But no more than the occasional and very brief thought.
And then over a period of a week my quadriceps decided to work at 25% capacity and provide unwelcome pain, my shoulders and collarbone joined the party, and my knees refused to be left out.
I went from 90% mobility to 20% mobility over that week. One morning it took me twenty minutes to get dressed. Pain moved in as a permanent body mate.
I felt and walked like a 90-year-old woman…and not a healthy one.
In the past ten days, I’ve seen my family doctor 3 times. I began a series of tests for everything imaginable. Being fortunate enough to live in a country with excellent national health insurance and health care, the bureaucracy is daunting but the availability and affordability are there.
I’ve gone through the process of learning to let go of activities I love like a ninja on steroids. I haven’t driven to visit with grandchildren or taught a yoga class in over a week. I haven’t met friends for coffee, shopping, or a museum visit, either. My walks have gone from 4 or 5 kilometers a day to 1 kilometer on a flat surface…on a good day. Cooking, which I love, has become the simplest preparation with the least standing time. And sometimes I leave the whole thing to my very supportive, caring husband.
I love to read, but when that’s pretty much the only thing I can do it gets old. I love to watch tv series, but I’ve discovered the limits of that, too. I’m super appreciative of my friends who drop by to chat, pick up a few things at the grocery store for me, or just check in to see how I’m doing.
I’m pretty careful about the meds I’m willing to use and how much. I’ve always been very stringent with things like ibuprofen and even simpler pain medications. My pain threshold is pretty high. I went from an ibuprofen or two a week, to one a day, to two a day, and then on to something stronger. Waking up to debilitating pain in so many joints and muscles every day has turned me into a junkie for the 3-7 hours of significantly decreased pain that a Naxyn 500 pill can give me.
My kids are great. They call. They listen. They’re supportive.
The hard truth of this thing, though, is that all of the wonderful people in my life give me a big morale boost and are very logistically helpful, and necessary, but ultimately pain is an individual experience.
Twenty years of meditation and learning Eastern philosophy have been helpful to me in so many areas of my life. And I’m finding that they get me through the occasional moments of deep feelings of loss – loss of mobility, loss of the activities I love, loss of comfort in my body – and allow my natural optimism to revive from occasional panic.
Exercising my deep, mindful breathing muscles and doing a lot of acceptance, living in the moment, and letting go. My ego gets in the way from time to time and the monkey chatter gets really loud, but so far I mostly can reach that sweet spot of equanimity.
Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of this. Find a diagnosis and management plan that works. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go back to some or all of the activities I love. Hopefully, we’ll still make that 4-month trip to India in late February.
Meanwhile, it’s been one of life’s toughest lessons yet and I’m grateful for all the many blessings in my life that are coming to my aid.
I live in a pastoral, peaceful community of 1000 families. Forty years ago, I’m told, there were no birds because there were no trees. Today my partner and I sit outside on our back porch, eat our breakfast of fresh fruit and freshly brewed coffee and tea, and watch dozens of birds eat theirs – the pieces of bread I scatter for them in our backyard every morning – before they drink from their bird bath or take leisurely baths. Sometimes a fox makes a brief visit, too. Idyllic.
The Corona pandemic is over in Israel. Stores and schools have been open for a while now. We haven’t been required to wear masks outside for weeks. In another week we won’t be required to wear them inside, either. During the various times when it was advised that people over 60 remain at home, teenagers in our community brought us the food we ordered from the community grocery store, and were happy to be able to help.
Recently Hamas, with differing excuses, renewed their shelling of our cities. Thousands of rockets were shot off indiscriminately toward residential areas, sending children and their parents rushing for bomb shelters. In some places, they had 15 seconds to get there before the rockets fell. Luckily, or by the hand of God as some people believe, we’ve developed a device to prevent 90% of the rockets from falling to the earth.
Here in our community, we have been an oasis of serenity, even as rockets fell and Arabs burned Jewish cars and synagogues in Lod, Acre, and Yafo. Communities where Jews and Arabs have been trying for over a decade to share neighborhoods in experiments of true co-existence, the veil of illusion was brutally torn away.
As anyone who watches television series or isn’t totally cut off from the news knows, the US is consuming itself like a snake devouring itself from its tail. Black protests, complete with vandalism, theft, and, in some cases, violence; Asians coming out of the closet concerning the decades-old prejudice against them, triggered by the murder of Asian spa workers. Whites feeling marginalized; any action on their part is wrong. Anti-semitism on the rise. Jews feeling it’s unsafe to walk on the streets of America wearing a kippah (Jewish head covering), and being assaulted in places as far-flung as New Mexico.
Books are being censored. History is being rewritten, People are being canceled.
“Politically correct” reigns and woe be unto the person who uses the wrong pronoun.
George Floyd, killed by police officers while resisting arrest, was found to have fentanyl in is system to the point of intoxication. His autopsy also revealed recent methamphetamine use at the time he was arrested for allegedly trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. He had advanced heart disease including an enlarged heart, one artery 90% blocked and two others 75% narrowed.Excessive force was used in restraining him, which, along with the other factors, resulted in his death.
George Floyd was made a martyr for the cause of Black Lives Matter. Of course they matter. No more or less than the lives of all other people. George Floyd may represent the hundreds of Blacks stopped unnecessarily by police officers, treated with suspicion and hostility, who are fearful for their lives during such stops. But does anyone really want to raise their children to think of a repeat criminal, convicted of eight crimes between 1997 and 2005 as a hero? A man who served four years in prison for aggravated robbery during a home invasion?
In what universe is every Black person in prison a victim while Jews running for shelter from falling rockets are aggressors? In what universe is a pandemic a worldwide government conspiracy and the vaccine to prevent further spreading of the virus an extension of that conspiracy? In what universe are children who come home from school with a barely passing grade met with “Good Job!” by the parents? In what universe is the murderer of an elderly woman beaten and thrown out of her window acquitted because he was under the influence of marijuana at the time?In what universe are people arrested for violent crimes released on their own cognizance immediately because it would be discrimination against the poor to require them to post bond? In what universe are crimes against Blacks hate crimes while crimes against Jews are not?
It’s a universe which is addled, afflicted, and astray. Where reality is what the media reflects instead of what we actually experience; where a person’s word is no longer the truth as she knows it but as she wants you to believe it to be.Where anything goes if you can sell it, and you have no responsibility for the consequences.Where nothing is expected to last – not jobs, appliances or relationships. Instant food, instant gratification, instant success, or move on.
Lots of people are saying what a tough year it’s been. I’m reminded of the two arrows – the first one is the inevitable pain in life such as a pandemic. The second arrow is self-inflicted suffering like societies consuming themselves like a snake eating itself from its tail.
How bad will things get before we wake up to the absurdities? I hope I live to see it. I also hope the damage done in the meantime won’t be too horrendous.
There are a bunch of things that no one tells you about aging. Or maybe they tell you but it goes in one ear and out the other. Not relevant. Things that register in the way the laws of physics register – ya da ya da ya da.
As I turned 60 and even more after 65, I became aware of the physical aches and pains that go along with aging and, in my case, are the price for having jumped and danced around and, taking advice from The Eagles, taken my body to the limits for decades. I remember an orthopedist once telling me to keep teaching hip hop, hiking, and doing whatever I loved because ultimately even sedentary people have joint aches and pains…but they have a lot less fun getting there. I totally agree. Even on the mornings that my knees wake me up with a call for help.
It’s some of the other things about aging that I never gave much thought to (or any).
finding conversations of people under 40 uninteresting
having read every permutation of book and movie plots ad nauseam
being cold (or hot) when no one else is
losing friends to illness, lack of mobility, or death
aging differently from significant people in my life
YIKES!!
It turns out that an inevitable part of aging is loss and grieving for those losses. Big losses and small losses. And some losses are harder than others; not necessarily the “big” ones.
We all do it differently.And it all looks different on other people.
I remember having no regrets at 50. Ha!
I remember letting go of hip hop and aerobics in the blink of an eye. Didn’t seem like fun anymore. Traded my spandex for yoga pants happily.
I remember not even entertaining the notion of a sedentary life requiring programmed exercise. Counting steps? Furthest thing from my mind.
I remember a time when illness and death weren’t even a tiny part of my thoughts.
I’d read about (other, much older) people complaining that many of their friends had fallen by the wayside one way or the other. I’d heard them extolling the virtues of cultivating younger friends to combat loneliness.Scroll up – in one ear and out the other.
My partner “lost” his mother 10 days ago.My mother-in-law died. She wasn’t a nice person. Not a good mother. A narcissist. She was lively and charismatic and loved to be the center of attraction, but her children and friends paid a heavy price. She had dementia for the last five of her 93 years and didn’t recognize my partner or his sister who, in spite of a complicated and challenging relationship, made sure her last years were comfortable. If emotions were rational, no one would mourn her death. But if emotions were rational they wouldn’t be called emotions.
emotion – derived from the Latin term emovere;
to agitate or stir up. The affective aspect of consciousness
My parents are both long gone. My father died thirty years ago and my mother about twenty. Fortunately for me, I made my peace with both of them while they were alive. They weren’t partners in the process, but the possibility of relating to them with equanimity in life was a blessing.
My partner wasn’t so fortunate.
Watching his mourning process has been thought-provoking and, yes, emotional. A loss of innocence. A loss of possibility. A loss of the luxury of avoidance. A recognition of the loss of reconciliation. A loss of the comforting delusion of immortality.
My mother had bi-polar disorder. The shadow of her disease lurked everywhere. Sometimes it blotted out all joy and normalcy; sometimes it was a vague and disquieting sadness in our house. It was always a sense of waiting for the other shoe to fall. I was entrusted with her care from a very young age. I gained confidence and self-esteem that’s served me well throughout my life. I also harbored resentment and fear of chaos in the world.
I used to imagine myself a very small figure, wrapping my arms around my knees, head bowed, before a huge Mr. Clean-type genie, rising out of a magic Aladdin’s lamp, arms folded, scowling down on me. I didn’t understand the image or why it recurred so consistently and persistently throughout my life.
Imagine him with a turban, beard, and ferocious expression
The image vanished, never to return again, once I worked through my relationship with my mother. It was a loss I recognized with gratitude. I forgave my mother, without her permission, and realized one day that I felt a loving, empathetic sadness for her; a brilliant woman whose life was taken from her by a crippling disease no one understood at the time.A tragic loss.No second chances.
Not so with my mother-in-law.
The frightening image my partner has of her is his to tell, not mine, but he has one no less frightening than mine.
It’s difficult to accept that a person can be unkind, cruel, and totally lacking in compassion. How much more so when it’s your parent; the person entrusted with your care, emotional and physical? It’s tempting – no, imperative – to search for an underlying reason to shed a more sympathetic light on such a parent.
He searched. We searched. The round of reasons we tried to fit into the square peg bulged and defied imagination.
Ultimately, the physical loss of his mother grew into the loss of innocence. The first kind of loss is met with a simple grief. She was, after all, turning 93 two weeks later and hadn’t been herself for years. The second kind of loss is far deeper and creates a grief that is painful at any age, but magnified at 70, after so many years of pretending, ignoring, excusing, and hoping.
Two of our sons were at their grandmother’s funeral to support my partner and express their respect for family ties. When I talked to our older son before he left to meet us at the airport, he asked how his father was doing. I explained that he had many unresolved issues with his mother and now they’d never be resolved. I added how important it is to confront unfinished business with a parent in life. Hint, hint. (He moved on.)
There’s a lot of loss involved in aging. Loss of a parent. Loss of freedom from pain. Loss of mobility. Loss of long term friends. Loss of mental acuity. Loss of hearing.(Shall I go on?)
A Buddhist parable addresses the problem of suffering. It describes the two arrows in every difficult situation in life. The first is the arrow of pain, in this case loss, and the second is the arrow of suffering. The first is inevitable but the second is optional. It’s the arrow we shoot into our own hearts with our reaction to the inevitable losses that come with aging.
So many circumstances are beyond our control. My mother’s disease; my mother-in-law’s nature.
We can only prepare ourselves by nurturing our souls. By taking a deep dive into ourselves and becoming familiar with the particles of a higher power which exist inside each of us. By honing our ear to hear the pure voice of equanimity which resides there.
Many years ago I weighed the option of starting a hospice center. I had a conversation with the man who created a small hospice center in Jerusalem. At the time he was in his early 80’s. He exuded empathy and kindness. We spoke after I took a tour of the center with a staff member. I was surprised to see that each of the rooms had two residents. I asked the founder of the center if it was disturbing for the residents to witness the death of their roommate. His answer equally surprised me. He said that with the work done with the residents, every death since the center’s inception had been peaceful, and inspired serenity in those who witnessed it.
Choosing equanimity isn’t a one shot deal, and it’s not easy. It takes diligence and practice and work. Committing ourselves to the effort doesn’t ensure total success, or success every time. But to quote a poet by whom many of our lives have been enriched, Mary Oliver,
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
For those of you who read my last post – yes, we made it home – by hook or by crook and by the hair on our chiny chin chins.
For those of you who remember the days when people used to kiss the tarmac when they arrived in Israel – for security reasons it’s no longer possible, but the feeling was certainly there for us on March 19, in these times of Corona.
We spent 27 hours getting home from India on Ethiopian Airlines and didn’t even grumble about it. Seventeen hours in Addis Ababa? No complaints. A long line in the airport (several times) to have our temperature taken? That’s fine, thank you. Rowdy passengers (my partner calls them ‘enthusiastic’) unrestrained by the crew? Peachy.
The main thing was to get out of India and back home.
Things changed literally from every morning to every evening and then again the next morning. Prime Minister Mod’i, like many of the world’s leaders, proclaimed increasing restrictions from announcement to announcement, the difference being that he is responsible for 1.5 billion people – 17% of the population of the world! A critical mistake on his part could very well mean millions of Corona deaths; maybe tens of millions.
Within days all pending visas were canceled, and India closed its borders to foreigners. Within twelve days the skies were closed – no flights in or out.
One by one, the 29 states in India began closing their borders to foreigners. After that, one by one, they began requiring all foreigners present within each state to leave.
Cab drivers began to refuse foreigners. Guest houses did as well. The railway system shut down. Over a period of 10 days, intercity buses were canceled. Foreigners asked to leave their lodgings had limited options for travel elsewhere. Some began sleeping in the streets.
Within ten days Mod’i enforced a one day lockdown from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Four days later he proclaimed a nationwide lockdown…period. Anyone who’s experience the open market in Delhi or the crowded streets in Mumbai can imagine how eerie a sight that was.
By March 25th all domestic flights were canceled.
The Israeli embassy started organizing private buses to transport stranded Israeli citizens to Delhi and Mumbai to be close to an international airport for extraction.
In Israel, the restrictions of movement are barely enforced. In India, the police canvassed the streets beating non-complaint people with sticks.
We reserved flights with 5 airlines. They began canceling the day before take-off until we were left with Aeroflot and Ethiopian Air. We chose Ethiopian because Europe seemed unreliable with Russia announcing the closing of its borders for the day of our flight. After trying to get confirmation that our flight would still fly, calling Aeroflot offices in Israel, India, and Russia – including a conference call with a friend in Israel, me in India, my friend’s sister-in-law in Russia, and an Aeroflot agent in Moscow – the confirmation was still shaky.
We arrived in Israel at 3 a.m. Two friends had left one of our cars in the airport parking lot (one drove his own car to return both of them back home). No one spoke to us at the airport. No one asked us any questions or took our temperature. No one asked how we planned on getting home even though we were officially in quarantine once we touched down on Israeli land.
Go figure.
Home Again
Our friends in Israel stocked our fridge and freezer. They decorated our home with welcome home posters. We even had daily visits with several of them on our back porch – six meters from us and on their own chairs. Friends are the best! We found out later than one of them called one of our children to enlist her aid in convincing us to leave India.
My Corona symptoms disappeared once I’d spent a few hours in my own home.
Friends we made in India were in touch with us – some more than once. They were all in lockdown but doing fine. Of course, none of our Indian friends are homeless or live in slums with collective toilets and corrugated roofs. They expressed happiness that we made it home, and, interestingly, appreciation for our sensitivity to India’s needs by leaving them to cope with Corona on their own.
We can’t go out for another eight days, not even to a pharmacy or grocery store, or to get exercise within 100 meters of our house, like others can do. But we’re fortunate in so many ways – first and foremost that we are healthy, and our children and grandchildren are healthy – and then:
We spent five months together in India and became even closer so that being together in our home with very limited contact with the outside world is not at all a hardship
We have a spacious house and even a yoga studio
We have a comfortable back porch with a large, lovely backyard
We live in a community where the youth are happy to help and have organized to do shopping and bring it to people’s homes
We have neighbors who pick up our garbage from the end of our front walk to throw it away.
We have enough income to survive these crazy times if we budget ourselves properly
Of course, we worry along with the rest of the world, listening to the horrific statistics of deaths and illness. Personally, I keep busy with yoga, meditation, reading and binging on tv series. All day I have a Pollyanna-ish feeling that all will be well soon, only to be brought down to earth when I listen to the evening news.
We check in with our children and grandchildren, with our friends and our siblings when the level of worry rises too high.
And we pray, along with other inhabitants of our beautiful earth, that we’ll emerge on the other side of this crisis more grateful for our lives and our many blessings, and with renewed commitment to ease the friction, poverty, and distress in the world.
If nothing else has taught us how interconnected we are, surely the map of COVID-19’s progress throughout the world is proof.
Rishikesh is one of seven holy cities, Sapta Puri, in India. Aside from being alcohol-free and vegetarian, the city is a spiritual center, pilgrimage location, yoga and meditation center, and home to many Sadhus.
A Sadhu is a religious ascetic who has renounced the worldly life. He often lives on the street, with only the essential belongings for survival – his clothing, turban, towel, sandals, and beggar’s bowl. He is dependent upon the good will of others to provide him with enough money to buy sustenance-level nourishment each day.
On my way to yoga in the morning, after crossing the Ram suspension bridge, which is blessedly motorcycle-free at that time of day, I meet only cows, dogs, and Sadhus, all waking up after a night spent outside.
Sadus may be said to be at one side of the spirituality-materialism spectrum. As I wait for my sweet yoga teacher, Gagan, to arrive on his motorcycle, sharing the pergola which overlooks the Ganges with the same Sadu each time, I can often hear a passing Sadu chanting quietly or not at all quietly.
“Ram. Ram. Ram. Ram. Ram. Ram. Ram.”
Though they’ve renounced family, home and worldly endeavors and accoutrements, I’ve noticed that they tend to hang out in twos, threes, and fours – a social group of sorts – and they gather their few belongings safely around them or cover them with a tarp on a nearby bench. Some take advantage of government incentives and work at ashrams where they receive food and shelter in return.
As my yogi says, human nature is one of collecting: things, acclaim, friends, knowledge, money. Another distinction between other animals and the human animal.
We ate dinner with a group of 20 strangers in Delhi not too long ago. Nice people. Friendly. As travelers are wont to do, people spoke freely about their lives, philosophies, travels, and families. The two men who sat closest to us got into a long conversation (with my partner) about their various, and, it turns out, multitude of real estate investments all over the world. The ones they sometimes live in, the travails of having renters, the value and tax issues of different locations.
Neither was Bill Gates but neither was a Sadu either.
We’ve been in India for over three months now. It’s a long time to be out of mainstream living. With each day that our work commitments, family and friend socializing, and community presence gets further away, our bonding to each other and our investigation of personal values and beliefs becomes more intriguing. There’s more time spent observing, thinking, integrating and softening.
It could be that the inherent nature of India is friendlier and more conducive to this transformative process. It could be that an extended period of free time would create the possibility of this process anywhere.
In India specifically, as we travel, meeting other travelers, shopkeepers, restaurant and guesthouse staff, yoga practitioners, musicians, and language teachers, we can’t help but observe their everyday life and that of passersby. Some of them become a regular part of our day for the week, two or three that we are in their vicinity. We seem to be seeing the spirituality-materialism spectrum in real time.
Spirituality is in the air.
From JP, the owner of our guesthouse near Munnar, who gets up at 4 am each morning for 20 minutes of yoga, to the shopkeeper in Rishikesh who closes his shop at 10 pm, bends down 3 times to kiss the step in front of his shop door, touches the doorframe and then his forehead before getting on his motorcycle to head home, to the clearly well-to-do middle-aged Indian couple who travel to The Ganges to dip themselves in holy water annually, to my lovely harmonium teacher who has a smile for the pesky monkey who pushes open her door when she shakes her head in that ubiquitous, multi-meaning Indian wag and says “He, too, is one of the gods’ creations.”
The human nature of collecting is evident, too.
The same people mentioned above charge money for their goods and services. In general, they unabashedly charge foreigners more – sometimes shocking attempts to charge 10 times more. A Sadu might complain about a donation of 10 rupee (“But a chapati costs 20!”). One South Indian man we befriended had a candid conversation with us about his constant efforts to accumulate more wealth. The yogi with whom I practiced four years ago didn’t charge money (he reluctantly accepted my ‘donation’ of $75 for 10 classes) and this time made his charges clear before we began (less than $6/class).
So where does each of us choose to be on this spirituality-materialism spectrum?
Does being a Sadu, at one side of the spectrum, preclude a bit of materialism? Does being Jeff Bezos preclude a smidgen of spirituality? (btw, did you know that there is not one woman on the list of the top ten richest people in the world?)
Gagan believes that it’s easier for those who have wealth to take on spirituality. Perhaps this originates from his vantage point as a Sikh yogi whose path of relative poverty and practice was inherited, clear from the age of 10. Perhaps he envisions those who have large bank accounts as having the luxury and ease to choose to invest time in introspection and seeking spirituality.
It seems to me, from my vantage point of never having had to concern myself with the possible absence of my next meal or a roof over my head, that it’s easier for those who have not been educated to chase ever-improving material circumstances to take on spirituality.
Clearly Gagan and I bring different life experiences to our sense of things.
Seane Corn is one of the most famous (and wealthiest) yoga teachers in the world. Her net assets are reported to be over 20 million dollars. Not anywhere near Bill Gates’ estimated 100 billion dollars, but still not too shabby. While her exhibition-type, extreme style of yoga is not my cup of tea (maybe I just wish I could have her flexibility), I’ve admired her for years for her tireless work for altruistic causes. Her organization, Off the Mat into the World, offers yoga practitioners the opportunity to volunteer to build community centers in Africa, train young people to teach yoga and meditation in their villages and towns, and offer online courses for leadership initiative. A vegan, Seane teaches 250 days out of the year, and, when not teaching, calls a tiny yurt in Southern California home.
Miriam (not her real name) is a talented artist, living in a rural area of Israel. Her husband of 25 years is most often in the US where he teaches religious studies in a small community where there would be no religious learning if he didn’t offer it. They have little in the way of material wealth, other than the modest, heavily-mortgaged home Miriam lives in, and, sadly, have no children. Their daily lives are committed primarily to the deepening of their spiritual lives and sharing what they believe are their God-given talents – painting and teaching. Miriam offers half-day and full day retreats for women, providing spiritual, artistic and nutritional nourishment, charging on a sliding scale according to means. Her walls are covered with her beautiful original works, into which one can gaze, imbued with Kabbalist and/or personal spirituality.
(not Miriam’s work)
Most of us are neither Seane Corn nor Miriam. We’re neither millionaires nor Sadhus. Some of us may not give a second’s thought to spirituality or ethical behavior or the meaning of life; others may think about it fleetingly or in depth once a week, or at random times. All that stuff has been in my thoughts for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it led me to political activism, sometimes to volunteer work, sometimes to prayer, sometimes to regrets, sometimes to books, sometimes to an open heart. I’ve been blessed with 3 months of unrestricted time, a partner who’s happy to listen to and share philosophical thoughts, and surroundings that welcome it all.
We live in an age of moral subjectivism, relative realities, political correctness – some may be tempted to call it an age of wishy-washiness. We hear that there’s no objective right or wrong, better or worse, too much or not enough. It’s all what you choose for yourself. The glorification of the individual, regardless of…well, pretty much anything.
But, hand on heart, don’t we all actually know what having enough looks like? I’m guessing it doesn’t resemble Jay Leno’s collection of cars or Imelda Marcos’s shoe closet. It most probably isn’t even reflected in most American’s refrigerators or leisure time. I’m a member of a FaceBook group of people traveling in India. Recently there was a post about whether or not to tip in India, and how much. Some of the responses were eye-openers. From ‘Indians don’t tip.’ to ‘It’s good enough to round up.’ to ‘They earn so little that 10 rupee significantly increases their income.’ (10 rupee is the equivalent of 15 cents) Seriously, guys!? Then there’s the feeling that we’re too busy to walk the breast cancer marathon or visit the aunt who’s broken her hip or volunteer at the literacy group downtown.
We each choose our own path, even though sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. We have internal voices that may sound a lot like one of our parents, our seventh grade teacher, our partner, our eighteen-year-old self, our rabbi, our neighbor, or all of those people and others besides. Voices that narrow our choices to, well, theirs. Or what they wish they’d chosen.
Confusing…and noisy. Hard to hear our own internal voice with all that racket going on.
Gagan shared his own belief about all this choosing, whether it’s about spirituality, materialism, or how much time to look at a screen of some sort. If you never regret your choice, your choice is good. (I wish you could see his expression and hear his voice as he says that.)
When I pushed him…what about an addict who ends up dying from his addiction?
The answer – If the addict dies with no regrets, then the choice is good.
Say whaaaat!?
That’s going too far for me, but I get it when he elaborates and adds that trying to guide someone else’s path is like trying to steer a passing car. Unless the driver pulls over, stops, and asks for directions, your shouts will just make you hoarse.
I’ve spent many hours perfecting work and making deadline only to find that the client didn’t bother to provide necessary material – and didn’t care. I’ve spent money and time fulfilling a promise that the person on the receiving end, it turned out, didn’t value much, or may have even forgotten. I’ve worried about people’s “wrong” decisions that turned out not to be so disastrous in the long run, or even had their positive aspects.
So if I believe people are happier with spirituality in their lives, authenticity, or altruism, or other people, I choose to resign as one of those internal voices that points it out.
I’ve chosen to integrate those attributes into my life and to respect your right to choose to integrate some, all or none of them into yours.
Suspend the usual platitudes and accepted opinions of the social groups to which you’ve assigned yourselves. Mission accomplished? Now read on.
We’ve seen many beautiful animals over the past 10 weeks in India.
India really knows how to create and maintain national parks the way they should be. The kind where tourists are only allowed in a tiny percentage of the park lands and animals live in the rest according to their natural instincts and behaviors, without threat or fear of their main predator – us.
As it turns out, India also really knows how to create and maintain zoos the way they should be. The kind where the animals have enough space to live their lives as comfortably as possible, while being protected from their precarious reality out of captivity.
Of course the Saraus Crane, that very tallest of birds, might prefer to fly free, and that Bengal Tiger might prefer to roam the tropical and subtropical rainforests chasing prey, but their natural habitats are, sadly, disappearing or have become too dangerous for them.
We humans have been responsible for many of the causes of extinction and the threat of extinction for many members of the animal kingdom (though certainly not all). We have become one of the major causes of their comeback, too.
Wolves and buffalo, verging on extinction in the ‘60s, have made a valiant recovery as a result of protection laws passed in the ‘80s. Severals kinds of frogs, antelope, birds, turtles, and leopards have been saved from extinction by zoos. Yep, zoos.
Seeing wild elephants from a safe distance in Periyar Park creates a very different visual than seeing elephants in the Mysore zoo. That difference makes it tempting to condemn the zoo concept.
But that condemnation could paradoxically lead to the extinction of a large number of animal species.
I admit to some of my very best memories being the Macaws at the clay lick in the Amazon, the playful Otter family in their natural waters near Sandoval, the Blue Boobies on the cliffs in the Galapagos, the warm weather Penguins in the Patagonia plains…you get the picture.
But I’m happy that the Golden Lion Tamarin, once almost extinct, is thriving in captivity so that my grandchildren can get acquainted. Same for the California Condor and other majestic beasts.
Sometimes generally accepted ideas need to be re-thought.
Yesterday was a travel day. Yep, we ventured out of our little piece of heaven. Traveled forty minutes on the sometimes barely existent road in a tuk-tuk to Munnar – the big city in these parts – town of 38,000 inhabitants.
Our plan for the day was to check out Munnar and then go on a TripAdvisor tour called The Tea Trail which included a visit to the Lockheart Tea Museum and Tea Factory as well as a visit with the tea pluckers as they’re called, and the chance to pluck some tea and follow it through until it turned into a cup of tea. We should’ve been suspicious right away since, the tea process being what it is, there’s no way our freshly picked tea leaves could turn into a cup of tea within an hour.
But all in good time.
The twisty, uphill road into Munnar, aside from being narrow and deeply rutted at least half the time, was breathtaking not only because of the near-collisions but also the fantastic views of the tea, which grows all over the place in extremely well-ordered glory, under a dramatic sky with clouds wisping around and in front of mountain peaks.
And then, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, there was this.
Why carrots? Who knows. But they were incredibly fresh and their color was the brightest I’ve ever seen. Tempting to buy but we had nothing imaginable to do with them so we sadly gave them a pass.
After a discussion about our finances just days ago, we’d decided to be more cautious with our spending (read“my” for “our” and “I” for “we”). But within minutes I’d bought handmade chocolates for one sister’s upcoming birthday and a mini-kurta and smaller box of chocolates for the other. This necessitated our third post office experience – the oddest and funniest yet. But that will appear in a much later post with tips for the traveler to India.
There’s a saying that everyone you meet is your teacher. Way back in Mumbai we had a young man guide us through the Mumbai markets. He was sweet but not much of a guide. We didn’t learn anything about Mumbai markets but we did learn little tips for getting along in India. One of the most useful of his instructions concerned bargaining – always start with an offer of 1/3 the asking price. Sounds insulting but it’s right on the mark. You get a feeling when the seller is finished and really won’t go lower. The final price will be 1/2 to 2/3 of the original price and everyone will be happy.
Our tuk-tuk driver from Munnar to the pick-up point for the tour started at 300 rupee ($4) and ended up taking us for 200. It was a 25-minute drive similar to the one from Ayursakthi Riverdale to Munnar – bumpy, with hairpin turns. He dropped us off at 14:10 for our 14:30 tour. It was a beautiful location overlooking the tea fields. We’d brought warmer clothes so the chilly mountain air didn’t lessen our enjoyment of the luscious green surrounding us.
At 14:40 there was still no sign of our guide/car and TripAdvisor wasn’t answering emails so we began walking the 500 meters downhill to the Lockheart Tea Museum through the enchanting (enchanted?) Eucalyptus tree forest.
My partner’s knee had started giving him grief in the morning. Downhill aggravated his discomfort more than uphill. He’s very fit – a gym fanatic – and definitely not a complainer, but at some point I waved down a tuk-tuk to take us the rest of the way, fuming at TripAdvisor and planning my scathing review of the tour we’d paid for.
At the museum and factory there was still no sign of TripAdvisor other than their stickers all over the place. The cashier spoke no English but the word TripAdvisor gained us free entry. We bumbled along on our own in the amusing museum with its silly relics – like ‘an English bathtub’ and a rusty old iron – and fascinating photos. Once again we found ourselves wondering about British rule. Every photo showed a work crew or social group with at least 15 Indians to every Brit. How in the world did they control India for 300 years?
As we sat at a picnic bunch overlooking the plantation, pondering the lovely view, TripAdvisor and other questions, a woman came running over and asked if we were with the French group. We said ‘no’ and once again tried to explain that we were a TripAdvisor ‘group’. She turned a puzzled face to ours.
No French. No TripAdvisor. No worries. She herded us to the factory entrance where a pleasant man with excellent English said he’d been told we’d arrive at 10 (Eureka!), which was later corrected to 13:00, but happily agreed to guide us through the factory if we would just put on little blue crime-scene booties.
The tour was very interesting. Who knew?
Turns out that all tea – black, green, and white – (white?!) – Orange Pekoe, Earl Gray and Chai – is made from the same tea plants. Black tea is made from the lower leaves, green tea from the top two leaves only, and white from the lone bud between the top two leaves.
Black tea is more processed, going through three drying stages, one of which lasts either 30, 60 or 90 minutes, a heating process, and one of three grinding options. Green tea is processed far less and white tea is barely processed at all.
Black tea is ground fine, finer or even finer, while green and white tea are not ground at all.
Finally, the death blow to my teabag drinking days, we saw that black tea, in its final stages, is separated out by color-sensitive cameras into leaves, stems and fiber. Some tea is packaged with only tea leaves while other are packaged with a mixture of leaves, stems and fibers. It’s the second kind that goes into teabags.
Ugh!
The stems have no flavor but add color. The fiber adds bulk. The first is labeled ‘Orthodox’ tea and the second is ‘CTC’ tea. I never noticed that on boxes of tea but I’ll be looking for it.
When we had a tea tasting experience at the end of our tour we could definitely discern the difference. The CTC tea had a very bitter aftertaste and the taste in general was less pleasing. Sadly, the white tea, which is coveted, has the most health benefits, and is very expensive, was flavorless.
On to the fields where we were too late to meet the all-female tea pluckers. Yes, that’s what they’re called, though it may be a translation from some other language.
Turns out you have to arrive by 13:00 to actually meet those plucky women who are paid the equivalent of $5.65/day to pick 27 kilo of black tea with machines or 400 grams of green or white tea by hand. Pick less than 27 kilo and the per kilo rate drops. Oddly enough, a lower per kilo rate is paid for every kilo over 27, also. Go figure.
Pluckers who are permanent employees are given free lodging but we couldn’t figure out why some workers are eligible while others are not.
22.4 million tons of tea are bought annually in the world. That’s one heckuva lot of tea. China is first in the world of tea production with India a solid second and many other countries, like Sri Lanka, trailing behind.
The Lockheart Tea Factory sells tea to Twinings, Tetley and other tea brands. We might be able to see their export name, Harrison, on some boxes. I’ll be looking for that, too.
The lovely woman who accompanied us in the tea fields lives seven kilometers from the factory. She takes a short cut through the forest, which reminded us of the children we saw in Peru walking home from school up into the mountains. She laughed when we exclaimed at her daily journey saying that she’s still fat. While I found her pleasingly rounded, I wouldn’t have called her fat. Indians don’t find that a derogatory term, though, and use it freely about themselves and others.
She kindly arranged a tuk-tuk to come get us, realizing that my partner’s knee was bothering him. She negotiated a price and we were off. The young driver was truly a maniac on the road, even more than usual, but we negotiated with his sweet brother (picked up along the way) a good price to wait for us while we ate dinner and then drive us back to Ayursakthi Riverdale.
Weighed our options ⚖️ – possible death on the road, good price, possibility that none of the other many many tuk-tuk drivers would be willing to risk life and limb on that road at night – and confirmed the deal.
He took us to a pure veg restaurant where we had what was very possibly our best meal yet. Manchurian Mushroom, Green Pea Masala, Coconut Rice, Garlic Naan, Coffee and the best Masala Chai I’ve had so far – all for a total of about $6.50. Our dinner was served on big banana leaves.
No forks in sight.
Indians eat with their hands – actually one hand;their right – which is why only foreign tourists get forks in many restaurants and why there’s a sink or two in the restaurant. Washing one’s right hand is essential after the meal. Before the meal is optional.
Some foreign tourists emulate the eating with the hands thing. I have to admit, I don’t get it. Adopting customs that are pretty, like wearing a kurta, or practical, like the Indian version of the bidet, is nice. Using a banana leaf instead of a plate is genius. Roll it up & throw it out after dinner. No dishes to wash! But foregoing forks? Really? A bit silly, imo.
Lessons learned from our Munnar Tea Outing:
1. It only takes 3 minutes to steep tea leaves and is well worth the wait.
2. The Lockheart tea trail tour is great! Do it! But it’s done just fine without the commission to TripAdvisor and the added hassle of trying to hook up with them. Go on Monday – the only day the manual plucking of green and white tea is done. Get there before 13;00.
3. Pure veg restaurants probably prepare better veg meals than restaurants that provide veg and non-veg options.
4. Locals know the better restaurant choices. Ask them.
This trip started out as one of those ‘round the world’ tickets where you have to keep traveling in one direction – east or west – and can’t cross any specific ocean more than once. I must’ve played with that planning tool on the Star Alliance site for twenty hours or more over the course of several months.
Tel Aviv – St. Petersburg – Mumbai – all over India – China – Bora Bora – Alaska – Oregon Coast – California – Salt Lake City – Mount Rushmore – The Badlands – New Mexico – San Antonio – Fort Lauderdale – New York City – Toronto – The Bay of Fundy/Nova Scotia – Iceland – Tel Aviv
Juggling weather, direction, time.
How much is too ambitious? Australia, yes or no?
Should we rent an RV to travel around the US? A car with motel stays? Flights for the long bits?
But then the time came to make real decisions like renting out the house for the year and what to do with my yoga studio and my husband started hemming and hawing. There were hesitant chords of concern about leaving our lives for so long. I tried to ignore them. Gloss over them. Treat them like background noise.
A year. Twelve months.
I had to admit to myself that it was sounding like a really REALLY long time to me, too.
The house wasn’t the problem. Neither was the studio. Though I love both.
It was the kids, the grandkids, and the friends who have become no less our family in the 30+ years that we’ve shared a life.
So twelve months became ten months became six months and here we are with the second month of our six-month trip drawing to a close.
In this technological era, it’s pretty easy to keep in touch with people. We share our amazing surroundings and the interesting people who inhabit them with a WhatsApp group for our English-speaking friends daily. We post on FaceBook for our Hebrew-speaking friends or send separate WhatsApps or emails. We send messages to our family WhatsApp group, too, and keep in touch with them with video WhatsApp weekly when we can find a strong enough WiFi connection, or with audio WhatsApp when we can’t.
We spoke with our youngest son and his wife yesterday from an isolated snack food kiosk in the jungle as they drove home from an office party in Silicon Valley, California.
We remember the days, not too long ago, when we sat in Internet Cafes, paying for the internet per minute and waiting endlessly for the atrociously weak and slow connection. Then there was Ko Mak, an island in Thailand, where we had to hike an hour to the other side of the island daily for the only internet connection because I had left Israel in the middle of interviewing candidates for a position and had to go over resumes.
Earlier there just was no internet – impossible for our grandchildren to envision – so we made the occasional phone call when we could.
It seems that most of the important people in our lives are healthy and major crisis-free so far during this trip.
Before we left we knew that one friend was scheduled to have a small, probably cancerous, tumor removed from her kidney, and after we left we received the good news that all had gone well with her surgery.
One granddaughter had an ugly eye infection that seemed to linger endlessly. Endlessly finally came to an end after way too long a time for my taste. Her swollen-closed eye then returned to normal.
The worst of it so far has been a shocking but benign head tumor with sudden, unexpected, surgery that’s meant weeks of rehab for a neighbor who’s like a younger sister to me. That was a tough one because I knew that my presence could’ve been important for her morale, but, thankfully, her recovery seems to be going well.
Life is full of surprises – big and small; pleasant, unpleasant and neutral – and they don’t cease when we’re far away from our usual haunts.
So here’s the deal.
Relationships with people are one of the most important ingredients in the tasty soup of life. There’s our relationship with ourselves; our inner world. The one we take with us wherever we go, whether it’s to the living room or to India. Then there are all the others.
The ones we choose; the ones we’re born into; the ones we birth; the ones we marry into; the ones we grow into because of circumstances; the ones who are part of the landscape of our lives.
There are even relationships we’re semi-unaware of until they’re brought to our attention.
There are close relationships and casual relationships. There are close relationships that become casual sometimes and casual relationships that become close at others.
There are relationships that take us by surprise and relationships like old slippers – comfy and constant.
But there’s one reality of important relationships that my husband has pointed out to me many times – they have a past, a present and a future. If one of those elements is missing, the relationship is a like the one with that second grade teacher you had in elementary school. She may have been one of the most significant people in your life when your were seven but she’s only a fond memory today.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a relentless technological freak. I love the newest, the most creative, the most surprising new concept, gadget or app. I’m that person that buys the out-of-the-box FaceBook solution for neck tension and was one of the first to contract out administrative projects to freelancers online fifteen years ago. I never give up communicating with people in the Mayalayam spoken and written on my translation app in spite of dozens of puzzled expressions. I trust Uber and Waze and UpWork.
I prefer email and WhatsApp to phone calls or personal business meetings. If you WhatsApp me, chances are you’ll get an immediate reply sixteen or seventeen hours out of twenty-four, even from the tropical jungle of Kerala.
And yet.
I’ve learned to embrace another reality about relationships.
The important ones cannot, ultimately, be sustained with technology. They can be maintained temporarily in a loving electronic space when watered sufficiently – pardon the mixed metaphor – but they will eventually rise from the lower berth to the 3rd tier berth of relationships and become your second grade teacher.
It’s true of best friends, of sisters, of kids, and probably most of all of grandkids, who have the disadvantage of being too young to have solidified any relationship enough to withstand the loss of perpetual physical proximity.
I love to travel. Someday I may not be able, physically, to climb into a train berth or even get on a plane to travel to another exotic location, but I’m guessing I’ll become an armchair traveler. Meanwhile, I look forward to the next four months in India, a week in Greece with my daughter and granddaughter in July, and am already planning to rent a little place for three months in Guatemala next winter.
But I won’t be fiddling with that ‘round the world’ Star Alliance again in anticipation of a year of travel. I have a feeling that I won’t even be looking at six months again. I’m so happy that we grabbed the opportunity to take this incredible journey. I’m seriously enjoying every single day.
While I tend to feel ageless, I am aging. But that’s not the thing. It’s not fun to do many things I used to have fun doing but I’ve barely noticed that I’ve stopped doing them. I’ve moved on to things I may have once thought slow or unexciting and get a huge kick out them now.
The thing is that all the people I love are aging. Yep, even Alex, our youngest grandchild. And certainly our family-like-friends who have almost seventy years on her.
I want to be IN those important relationships. I don’t want a single one of them to become my second grade teacher and I don’t want to be theirs.
I’m so grateful that I’ve birthed, married into, grown into, chosen, and been brought by circumstances into relationships with multi-faceted, quirky, wonderful people whom I love and, wonder of wonders, love me back.
One of the best things about my life is that I’m fortunate enough to live in time that I can nourish both my love of travel and my love of relationship, if I can only remember to balance them and adjust to the times. After all, I could’ve been born under a bridge in Mumbai.
Happy Monday to all from 20 kilometers from the middle of nowhere.
The word ‘traveling’ has nine letters and just as many aspects to the activity the word describes. There’s the actual mode of transportation involved which can fill hours, days, or even weeks,
seeing the sights, experimenting with new food, learning about new cultures, seeking spirituality, discovering history, embracing nature, deepening your understanding of yourself, your travel partner, and your relationships with both, opening your heart, your mind…YOUR EYES.
As the husband of my cooking teacher, who spent years on the sea as the captain of a commercial vessel, told me, “Life is like a book. Those who don’t travel are always reading the same page.”
At the risk of offending all too many of you, I have to admit to agreeing with that statement to some extent, but will rein in my judgey side a bit and add that there’s plenty to learn from our everyday lives in our very own homes, too. We just have to do it. Harder than it sounds.
But that’s another story.
I could write an entire blog – or three – on each aspect of traveling, and might do just that, but this one is about an epiphany I’ve had as I’ve moved from my western, Israeli, specifically ideology-driven, life, to crowded Diwali Mumbai, the vast sandy beaches of Goa, the serene backwaters near Alleppey and now to the hill station, tropical green mountain area near Munnar.
I get into the vibrancy of the city-even Diwali Mumbai with all the millions- the constant movement, lights, traffic, endless options and continual visceral stimulation. There seems to be no limit to the number of shops I enjoy entering. I’m happy walking for hours down busy streets, wandering through museums – both conventional and quirky – waiting in winding snake lines of multitudes of people to see the most touristy of sights or hop on the boat, tuk-tuk, or train at the end of the crowd. I have no problem with getting lost for a while or not understanding or being able to make myself understood. It all works out in the end.
I’m attracted to drama, and there’s plenty of that to be observed in the city. Participation voluntary. For the most part.
Over the past eight weeks we’ve gradually made the transition inland. From waves crashing onto the rock barrier thirty meters from our balcony and dolphins playing twenty meters beyond that, to the gurgling stream just outside our backyard tropical mountain surroundings. We were somewhat prepared by the serenity of Kerala’s backwaters, running alongside the noisy towns of Alleppey, Ernakulum and Fort Kochi, as well as the steadily deteriorating road between Kochi and Pallivasal near Munnar but nothing can really prepare you for the quiet here.
Being isolated in nature is something that has to be experienced.
We made a conscious decision to settle into our new environment and let it settle into us. No martial arts performance yet. No trip into the town of Munnar. No tea plantation or spice garden tour. Just nature and quiet and us.
It took 24-hours for the monkey chatter to subside.
My yoga practice has been evolving…getting better and better.
I experienced a meditation so deep two days ago that it scared me a bit. The pang of fear brought me to the surface so fast I thought I’d get whiplash. Fear of what? Who knows.
Yesterday’s yoga, just before dusk, was the best yet. Fluid. Soothing and refreshing simultaneously.
At one point I felt I wanted to continue forever.
And then it was just the right moment to finish.
There’s such an awareness of productivity – accomplishing things – in the city.
There’s more an awareness of being out here.
Is there a productiveness in being? Can there be?
Since getting more involved in Eastern Philosophy, yoga and meditation, I find that there’s far less drama in my relationship with the people I love. I’ve integrated the concept of non-grasping without really making an effort to do so. It’s just happened with all the reading, thinking and practice of the past two decades. I worried that it was too much. That I’d become too detached from the lives and challenges of the people I love.
He asked me to close my eyes and try to take myself back to the time when there was more drama and intensity in my relationships. It took a minute of my precious 15 minutes with him but I was able to do it.
Then he asked me to return to a more recent time, with less drama in my relationships and, after a minute or two, asked what I felt in those moments as opposed to the previous ones.
I didn’t have to answer out loud. I opened my eyes to the answering smile on his face.
I love the city. I love the satisfaction of completing many, many tasks during the day. Love noise and crowds and shops and movement.
My body and soul are nourished by nature, by being, by deep silence.
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