Courage!

At university when I was struggling to complete my final exams owing to a double combo of ill health and a painful wrist injury my tutor sent me a note (haha pre-email days!) that said ‘courage — in a French accent’. I loved it. I think of it still when things get tricky. It made me smile at a time when I was feeling out of my mind with stress. I couldn’t see a way forward; I’m not sure my tutor could either. The final exam regime then was absolute, there really weren’t any options in terms of deferrals or retakes. The only possibility was to keep steady and do my best (as I did!) through a series of three hour written exams. That and a load of painkillers and coffee 🙂

Courage — taking heart.

En-couragement — having some inspiration that gives you heart, supplements or magnifies your own ability to keep going.

I’m seeking both at the moment. I’m thinking of the concept of sraddhā, usually translated as ‘faith’ though this never sat well for me. My own working definition is ‘conviction’, something more rooted in personal experience and observation, rather than being ‘out there’ or implying theism. Although practice is hard right now and my little yoga world feels in turmoil, I still have conviction. I still feel my practice is helpful more than it is harmful. I feel the difficulty, yet I don’t think I lack courage completely, I continue to show up and do my sadhana, continue to allow it to develop through time. This much is now how I am.

But encouragement — it seems hard to find, as never before. Maybe it appears differently and I don’t recognise it as such. I’m used to looking up, placing teachers and mentors on a pedestal, expecting them to fill my heart in various ways, to keep me going. Without that, where do I turn?

Now perhaps encouragement lies quietly in other places, waiting to be noticed. The colleague telling me I am her inspiration to go to the gym, someone sharing how my yoga words over the years have been helping her with work stress, the gym manager so amused as how relaxed and happy my students look after class compared to the HIIT crew, my mum’s smile on a video call, my husband expressing appreciation at how I support him through a difficult patch, the cut flowers in a vase on the table, and the food lovingly prepared for dinner…

Perhaps this is yoga out in the wild: me doing my best, taking care of myself and others, living with a full heart, keeping open. Perhaps this open heart is en-couragement in action. My offering to myself. It feels hard and it also feels true. A difficult lesson in growing up. A better late than never moment.

But it’s more than a moment of course. It’s a ongoing learning. And a yearning. It requires soft vigilance not to slide back into some false nostalgia of golden days past. Stay with it, I urge myself, stay with the messiness and the difficulty. Stay with it until it blossoms into self-governance and reliability, independence rather than aloneness.

David Whyte always says it best. Perhaps everything is waiting for me.

Your great mistake is to act the drama
 as if you were alone. As if life
 were a progressive and cunning crime
 with no witness to the tiny hidden
 transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
 the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
 even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
 the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
 out your solo voice. You must note
 the way the soap dish enables you,
 or the window latch grants you freedom.
 Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
 The stairs are your mentor of things
 to come, the doors have always been there
 to frighten you and invite you,
 and the tiny speaker in the phone
 is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
 conversation. The kettle is singing
 even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
 have left their arrogant aloofness and
 seen the good in you at last. All the birds
 and creatures of the world are unutterably
 themselves. Everything is waiting for you.