As 2015 winds down and 2016 begins, I have two blogs rolling around in my head. I am going to try to make them into one.
Often my best pieces of insight are thoughts I have for other people, but really they are insights for myself. Often I do not know this.
I sent an end of the year text to a friend of mine. She is a very driven activist and grassroots organizer who is trying to save the world by activating social, political, and financial consciousness around the deceptively simple notion of democratizing well-being. Kerri’s organization is called Citizen Well (ctznwell.org) and they are a lobby group and a pact and on and on. I texted her, “I hope that Kerri Kelly has big AND little plans for 2016.” My thought was something like, Don’t get so lost in the far away vision that you forget to make little plans too, i.e. laugh, have fun, and celebrate the little successes.
Early this December, I was teaching a yoga workshop with my yoga teacher Jo Zukovich in San Diego at a studio called Yoga Arts. A thematic line I kept repeating to the students throughout the weekend was, “You are rising and falling in every moment of every day. This existential truth is part of the human condition and it is literally reflected in every yoga pose.” In reaction, on the last day, Jo shared a line she came across in a yogic text, “The ancient yogis said they were weaving the sky and the earth together.” First of all, I just love that line….it lights my sensibilities. Jo then followed with another line that made such a notion tangible and accessible. She said, “When I sit and imagine weaving the sky and earth together, it helps if I let the sky come down toward the earth.” For me, I felt the image of letting the ceiling move toward the base of my pose.
So I am working on another book in 2016. On some level, I have told myself that this book my well be the work of my lifetime….my version of reaching for the sky. Not surprisingly, I have been feeling overwhelmed by such a notion. I don’t even know if it is true, but I feel the pressure anyway. Sometimes we say the dumbest things to ourselves. So here come those crazy, wise ancient yogis. We weave the expansive sky with the grounded earth. We are the conduit, our lives, our stories. We perceive the possibilities of the sky and yet also stand on this beloved earth. Our experience, whatever it is, already weaves the two together. Somehow this notion of weaving helps me write forward. It helps me trust that the stories of my life are my only means to touch the sky.
So I hope you have big AND little plans in 2016. I hope you know that your little stories are important as your big stories. I hope you know that this is our only and best way touch the sky. Allow the sky to move toward the earth. I know I will. Let us both remember that it is our lives that weave them together.
Happy New Year…