Yoga Husbandry Entry #3

WTF happened yesterday?  It was a flail and a busy run around day, I am learning that maybe it didn’t have to be.

When I think back to pre yoga husband days I see free time, laughter, beer and lazy Sundays.  Is that even real?  I am not sure I can trust my hindsight anymore.  Not that my hindsight is bad, or not 20/20, I mean I’m pretty sure I had all the busy in my life, but I DO NOT remember feeling so spastic, EVER.

Yesterday I ran and ran, on a the big dumb treadmill of nothingness.  There was no reason for me to be so busy, I had like 5 things to do.  Clean out our motorhome and get ready to go to Victoria.  That’s it!  But I have this nagging feeling that I am not doing enough these days.  My business keeps most of my attention and I am finding that this attention is not always directed in the right place.

I used to have it so good.  Biking all day on the weekends, maybe cleaning the house if it’s raining, other than that things seemed so simple.  Somewhere along this Yoga Husband journey shit just got complicated.  That’s what I want to tell myself anyways.  I want to blame the way I feel so overwhelmed on adulting, or work, or my wife or something!  It’s gotta be someone else’s fault no?  There is no way I am doing this to myself.

WELP!  Turns out I hate myself that much, enough to run myself into the ground for no real reason.  Yes I need to work hard and be committed and get pitted into the barrel of my dream life(surfing analogy), but I DO NOT need to be so hard on myself.  I say hard on myself because that’s really all their is. Me and my big dumb brain.  Ya, it’s big.

Years ago we had a room mate, his name is Dustin, he was one of the most powerful things to happen to me.  I had been working in the oil and gas industry for about 2 years.  Asleep, taking an hour long bus ride to work, working for 13 hours, then bussing back and going to bed when I walked in the door to ensure I got enough sleep to survive.

Dustin rolled into our lives via…you guessed it, my yoga wife.  Dustin was the first man I really got to know who had a spiritual side, and not just the Jesus spiritual side that came along with growing up in a religious family.  A true spiritual side that HE found.  That HE decided he liked and HE decided how he got to work through it and relate it to his everyday.

He drove one of those buses I took to work everyday.  His job sucked.  He didn’t like it per say, but he showed up, drove that big white turd down the highway and back every day with a smile on his face.  He found joy in it, he found ways to ensure he had a good day, most days.  He is human, so there were days he just said fuck it and slept in.  That’s the Dustin I could related to, this other happy and confident and enlightened one was a mystery.

This was a turning point in my Yoga Husband journey, a big burly, manly, swearing, beer drinking, pot smoking, occasional cigarette smoking spiritual dude.  A dude.  To this point the most of the yogic men I had met were the classic yogic man you may think of.  Not really my style of person I want to aspire to.  This Dustin character on the other hand, he had something widely different going on.

Kaitlin and Dustin were best friends, he was able to keep up to her in this world, he was not a yogi in the asana (physical movement) sense, but he kept Kaitlin alive and excited for the spiritual ride.  Because I kind of like and respect Kaitlin I was naturally interested why she was so drawn to this guy, so I started having conversation with Dustin that almost made my skin crawl, at first.  Talking about presence, mindfulness and what the fuck that actually means. Turns out, all it means is that you are aware of yourself as often as possible.  Aware of why I judged people, why I felt overwhelmed or why I felt sick and tired a lot of the time.

He opened a door to this idea that the only thing there is is me.  The idea that every single thing I perceive as the world is actually happening inside my head.  From a neurological stand point this is true.  Science.  I see the world, I feel the world and it all goes through my brain then somewhere in there my consciousness picks it up and turns into something I can put my finger on.  That to me is wild.  The issue lies in what your consciousness decides you get to perceive as your reality.  What kind of filters you have in place to sort through what is going on and therefore literally shaping the world around you.  I’m going to make some numbers up here, I don’t have time to search the internet for the exact figures, but the point of the following statement will still ring true and get across.  So don’t be so nit picky about the details, nerd.

We live in a world filled with information.  Right now, I am sitting in my motorhome parked on the street, where I live, and I hear work crews trimming trees, cars driving by, people talking, wind, rain on the roof.  I see my computer infront of me, the cup of coffee next to it, papers strewn all over the table because I am messy when I work.  I smell my dog Teagan, coffee and I feel all sorts of other things.  So all this information can be broken down into bits of info, like a computer program.  I don’t understand how exactly they measure it, I don’t care really, but there have been studies done to recognize that our bodies are bombarded by something like 500 Million (made up number, but the real number is a big one) bits of information every second.  That’s a lot.  Our big dumb brains can’t handle all of that, I can’t sit in a bar with friends and not be completely distracted by the shiny TV in the corner, of course I can’t take in that much info every second.  So we have to filter some shit out and boil it down to a more manageable amount of useful info.

This is where our consciousness comes in and takes over.  This is the point where all the good, bad and haywire things which have happened to you throughout your life comes into play.  The time you smelled an olive when you were sick and now you hate olives.  You got laid in the back of a red car, so you love red cars.  All the random and not so random happenings in your life have made up a sort of net with certain shaped holes in it.  The net catches all the stuff you have decided you like, dislike, hate, love, turns you on, grosses you out, smells good, makes you gag, all of it you decided on, albeit unconsciously.  Otherwise everyone be the same and that would be awful because we would have to decide which person is the person everyone gets to be like, and my idea of that person is different than everyone else’s, and we might end up all being like Donald Trump or Carrot Top….

I digress; our brain nets catch all the stuff we don’t need, and the certain shaped holes let in our experience of reality.  By the end of this process we have narrowed down that 500 Million (made up number) to about 300 (made up number, but it’s close-ish) bits of info we can safely manage.  We literally all live in a world we have decided to be true, our reality is 100% shaped by our experience in life thus far.

It’s taken years, and A LOT of flailing and falling, but I am finally starting, just starting, to use this information to make my life better.  Like some sort of Yoga Husbandry Challenge my mood is up to me.  Even if someone cuts me off, this doesn’t mean I need to get irritated, it means that was something that happened and I decided that it’s annoying.  Socially, that IS fucking annoying, don’t be that guy, but I’m reminded of being in Greece.  In Greece if you leave a person length gap between you and the person in front of you in any line, some little old lady will slip right in there and steal your spot.  That’s the norm and Greeks don’t get pissed about it.  They have the same big dumb brain as me therefore this tells me one VERY important thing…..my ideas of what I like and dislike are mostly not mine.  I never got to decide whether some jack ass cutting me off grinds my gears or not, it was instilled in me via my social upbringing.  No baby is mad about someone cutting them off, they just aren’t.  Although I would love to see a little pissed off baby one day.

So moral of this story….not sure it’s a moral, more of take away or a tidbit.  I get to decide on my mood, in every moment.  Dustin wherever you are, I thank you sir for this gift.  This idea of everything happening around me being mine to make great or awful.  Sitting in my own skin and taking responsibility for what is happening to me is the greatest gift I can give myself.  I am literally the centre of the Universe as I know it.

Yoga Husbandry has taught me that being uncomfortable is really important. Dustin made me uncomfortable as hell….but I love that guy and I really miss the conversations we used to have.  Being uncomfortable plays a key role in knowing you are growing, so if you are always in the comfort zone you would never experience ANYTHING different than the sliver of reality we are given by our upbringing, ex-girlfriends, scrapped elbows and public pee pants accidents.

So this is me deciding a happiness goal for myself.  I am committed to being as happy as a Golden Retriever about to chase a ball in the park…

-ben