nature, yoga

Rat Race

bunny

Buns, Hop-Vogueing

Santosha, baby. Be content.

No students appeared at my Tuesday class this week. Perhaps I should say no other students, for there is teacher and learning moment in everything, including a room with just one person in it. The occasion allowed me some quiet practice alone – time to breathe, and time to work on a difficult pose, pincha mayurasana, and some other arm balances. Handstand is a tough one for me, as well. That day, serendipity allowed me to be not too busy for my personal yoga practice.

A popular meme lately, “Busy-Trap,” seems to be just a newer term for “joining the rat race.” We participate because of ambition, sometimes even small ambitions. Making sure you always have kale in the fridge for your “green smoothie a day” objective needs to be time-blocked, as does fitting in 16+ weeks of training runs for a marathon goal. If you have other humans or creatures depending on you, the reason stays simple, but the execution can get complicated. Hence the “trap.”

Or perhaps “busy” is just a nice way of saying, “Yes, I do feel that thing that you’re asking me to do is important, but tonight I need to tend to another important thing, and I don’t wish to burden you with an explanation of what it is.” It’s diplomatically easier if you’re not hooked up by IV to various social media, if you live in a larger city, or no one sees you return from work.

“So busy!” can also be a kinder -and yet sneaky- way of hiding your chosen burdens from yourself. Like the author of that recently popular article, I also speak from a position of relative comfort. I am fortunate to have a job that supports the things I do with the ample other waking hours in the week. Due to my seeming infinite curiosity, enjoyment of challenges and pleasures alike, and love of spending time with certain people, it’s very likely I’ve got too much on my plate. There are times when I sustain one regular activity because it keeps my mind off the topic of whether I should sustain one of the other activities. We have, or at least I have, a habit of looking to what we don’t have, when we are completely enrobed, or even swimming, in another thing that we do have.

Not a rat, at left: What I do have is ample nature surrounding my office, two legs that work, and room in my diet for a cinnamon-sugar cake doughnut. Earlier this week I spent a lunch hour, walking to and from the nearest doughnut shop, the most excellent Mojo Monkey Donuts. The adorable but sharply right-listing and possibly daft bunny caught my attention, on my return trip.

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