Life Lessons From a Silly Band

First, I want to thank you all for the beautiful comments yesterday.  Knowing a post that I wrote from an authentic place spoke to so many is comforting and encouraging.

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I continue to be tickled by the ways this emerging awareness manifests in my life.

Yesterday we were sitting down to dinner with our kids.  Our daughter had a frustrated look on her face, so I asked what was wrong.

Holding up her silly band* with both hands, she cried, "It won't go back!!".  (*For those non-parents, silly bands are a fun fad right now of flexible bracelets that have an original shape and will return to this shape once removed from the arm.)

I smiled and suggested she just let go.

Sure enough, when she stopped pulling at it and set it on the counter, it popped back to its kitty-like shape.

Not to be easily consoled though, she then furrowed her brow and said, "But it won't make a star!".

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I won't go into our parenting techniques from this point forward.  Here's what I think is cool about this experience, though:

1)  Practicing awareness in yoga, when writing, when mediating, when breathing, when....leads to increasing awareness when I'm not intending to practice.  It would have been easy to suggest she eat instead of play and miss and very beautiful moment for us both.  Instead, I got a nifty blog post out of it.  (Ok, ok...the point being that the benefits of practicing go beyond the practice itself.)

2)  Let go.  Stop pulling at life to try to find what you want.  It really is right here if you'll just let what is, be.

3)  You can't make a kitty into a star.  (Imagination games excluded here.)  Why whine about what isn't?  Either go buy the star or appreciate the kitty.  Change the situation and/or appreciate what you have.


Namaste.