Tag: life

Sitting on the Fence

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“He has sat on the fence so long that iron has entered his soul”

Remember that time when you couldn’t really wear clothes from the children’s department anymore, but the junior’s department was still a little too mature? The time when you floated around in this gray, gap tween purgatory, lacking a grander identity.

That’s where I am at right now, only instead of not being able to find an outfit for the middle school dance, I can’t find the next move I am supposed to make in this journey we call young adulthood.

I realized the reason I am unable to move forward is because I am quite literally sitting on the fence in almost everything that I do. I have got one foot at my childhood home in North Carolina, and one in my new home in Athens. I have one foot in law school applications and one filling out applications for a career in PR. I have one foot telling me to grow up and take on the responsibility and one telling me to stay a kid as long as I can. I am perched so high upon the fence, that my humpty dumpty moment is approaching inevitably.

I am sitting on the fence, because I thought from up here I could get a good look at my different landscapes, and hopefully be able to make the right decision. That’s not how it works though. When you perch yourself up on a fence, you get just a distant, skewed perspective on what is around you. To get a real view, you have got to dive right in and take everything in from experience.

That is what I have got to do. Just pick a side. Dive in. Experience. Learn. Grow. Learn some more.

Honestly, anything has got to be better than sitting in the middle. So that is my vow, stop teetering on the fence of indecisiveness and lunge off onto a side. What’s the worst that can happen?  So I don’t like a side, I can just climb back over and try out something else.

 

 

 

Child’s Pose

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Lately I have been thinking a lot about how my newly entered “adult” life never seems to let up, just throwing one challenge after another – leaving me anxious and on edge. So last week I tried to find a few moments in my relentless schedule to take a chance to do some yoga.  I went through the series of Bikram poses growing tired and sore from the exercise that I had strayed one for too long, and was relieved when I eventually settled into child’s pose.

As a sat there lying on the ground with my arms outstretched and my body sinking into the floor I thought about how satisfying sitting there in that moment was. Sitting there in child’s pose is where I came to the realization that that very moment represented the approach I needed to be taking in my hectic life. Child’s pose is not particularly special on its own, if you were to rest in the pose right now there would be nothing stand out or spectacularly relaxing about the moment. But after a rigorous hour of challenging poses and pushing your limits, Child’s pose offers a moment of refuge and peace that awards you for the hour of hard work.

That is life I realized. Finding complete and utter peace in the smallest moments, knowing that those moments are only satisfying because of all the hard work that lead up to them. Life is no longer about waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, its about enjoying the tiny beacons of light along the way and knowing that you are chugging always forward to the next destination. A cup of coffee on the walk to class. Lunch with a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. A manicure. These are the child’s poses that I have been overlooking lately. The precious moments of reprieve amidst the insanity of this crazy, wonderful, scary, life. These moments may be fleeting, but remember that they are only powerful because of all of the hard work that preceded them.

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Khalil Gibran