Holding On

Last weekend, we had a break from yoga school. It was Thanksgiving weekend, or, as I call it – Gratitude Day. Thanksgiving is so historically problematic and being from a sort of imploded and disconnected family, the traditions haven’t felt meaningful to me in a long time, if they ever did. So, I’m okay with the travel that my sort-of-a-parter likes to do over the holiday – he’s Indian – and the holiday means days off to him and nothing more.  I still like to at least remind myself to practice some gratitude – if only for the days off.

We went to Utah to rock climb, stayed in a hostel to keep it cheap but still warm, didn’t sleep much because the mattresses had as many canyons as the southwest itself, but were entertained by the fellow lodgers, who ranged from a european hitchhiking climber, an old dreaded hippie, and petite, Bollywood singing Indian climber from LA, and etc. But still, while I was on board with and excited about the trip – I feel like I haven’t had an adventure in far too long and like my Midwestern college town, with it’s niceness, it’s flatness, it’s family-ness, it’s cold cold clouds, was closing in on me.  The broad skies of the desert were calling me, calling me to breathe. I still felt the pressure of all I had to do. MFA homework, yoga school homework, a million and five personal goals, the cleaning and organizing that hasn’t been done forever, the financial check in – will I ever retire?, etc. I made a plan. It’s what I do to organizing the chaos.

I make a plan. In climbing we hold on to tiny little things. And in holding onto these tiny little things we make progress towards a goal. I used to say to myself, in life as in climbing, but perhaps not entirely. Although in climbing we also let go and focus. The tiny little things are a path somewhere and there isn’t room for distraction. You can’t climb 5 routes at the same time. And it’s because of the focus you find the tiny little things.

I am often trying to climb five routes at once in life. No wonder it doesn’t work. But I have no idea how to change. What to let go of? It all seems so important. 

On Gratitude Day, I planned many activities for the airport. Instead, I texted lovely messages of love and gratitude to the people in my life. One, I sent to a friend I planned to see in Denver and she responded in the terse way she sometimes does that throws me off a bit. In person she is the warmest human being alive. In written communication, she is not. And it has more than once prompted me to create problems that weren’t there. My immediate emotional response to her terseness was anxiety and fear, but for the first time it dissipated quickly. Maybe the yoga is good for me, I thought. 

But I also realized that I need to let go. Relationships with people are not in my control. It is not all up to me. Relationships inherently involve other people, those people that I find so fascinating. When I reflect on that friend in Denver, I was honored and flattered when she deemed us friends. I look up to her and the work she has done, her life is one I wished I had lived. But I didn’t. And I’m in my 40s now, not even my early 40s (why is age so hard to own up to – for me), I’m too old to be looking for mentors as though I was just starting out. My path has been very twisty and there’s been much I’m not sure of. I’m not at peace with where I am, but I’m not at the beginning of the road

I think about my motivations for this relationship. About the anxiety. Am I worried about losing a connection to a person I love or to a life I wish I’d had, one that feels out of reach and a person who had that life who made me feel seen? My motivations are perhaps less than pure. I need to hang on to the love, let go of the clinging to what never was.