I show up because...

(9/25/14)

Over the summer I attended a huge outdoor yoga practice in Cleveland called Yoga Rocks the Park. It was an amazing evening practice with thousands of other yogis. The sunset helped the light to leave as the darkness faded in. Then this awesome light installation brightened. (I am sure there is some symbolic way of saying the darkness could not keep away the light, but frankly I am tired of saying the darkness is bad. I like the dark and without it there would be only restless sleep. Not the point.)


The point is this: now I am on an email blast from a yoga studio that is 142 miles away from where I reside. This means it is highly unlikely I will be attending their Tuesday evening mindfulness seminar or whatever. And that is simply a shame because what is offered is soooo what I need. Again, not the point.

The point is this: those emails contain a personal reflection from a yogi that starts with "I show up because..." and the response that made me pause was this: "I will never achieve perfection in life or practice, but something about that concept makes me want to keep trying."


This simple statement made me stop and my tracks and say, yeah, she is totally right. We (I) will not EVER be perfect but that idea, that perfect existence, is an idea worth being inspired by and worth striving for even though it is, by definition, an unattainable goal. I like to say "oh, well (insert explaination of something I screwed up), I am not perfect...yet." And usually that is what I mean, I am not perfect yet. I am going to keep trying to be better and get closer to this image of perfection I have built in my mind, and regardless of the impossibility, I am not going to give up. Just being a little bit closer to an idea is worth the effort. 

Thanks, InnerBliss Yoga, for the inspiration to keep showing up.