Simplicity

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from a friend. A two hour phone call from a friend. A beau like firefighter friend. We talked of the recent weeks he'd spent in Oregon fighting a fire. We talked of the self defense class I'd taken. We talked of the NFL season thus far and a quarterback friend we share. We talked of the MLB post season at our fingertips and a relief pitcher Dodger friend we share. We talked of his sister and her new chocolate lab. And we talked of my mom and the surgery on her black lab. We talked of his parents and their cruise up the eastern seaboard to see the changing of the fall foliage. We talked of my mom and the same cruise she's taking as they debark. We talked about how impossible it is to ever make what we have work, and we talked about what our friends will never understand: our lives are indescribably connected despite our best efforts in opposition.

In yoga, whether you're doing bikram or power, meditative or any other form, uji breath is the common link. The uji breath is so common, that it's at the core what yoga is. Through yoga, you learn how remarkably critical the breath is. That that breath can heat up your body, and cool it down, open muscles and close them right up again. That when life gives you nothing but woes, it's that breath in which you always return to. As regular as the timing of the sun. As powerful as a foreign military. As simple as a child's laughter.

Like grief, a quickness to acceptance is at the core of happiness. It's my reason for being happy more often than the average bear. It's all resilience is. I see acceptance there. Pass go, collect $100 dollars. Buy park place and breeze through collecting monopoly pieces. Win the game. Prize: acceptance. Now go be happy.

I told fireman what a fool he is. I told him that he should go out, and try to find someone as awesome as me. There's no way to say this seriously, so he laughed. "Just try," I said, "and find someone as awesome as me." Just like that I said it. Laughter.

I wasn't attempting to be funny. I was absolutely seriously. Though a diztiness about my personality makes it remarkably hard for anyone to take me seriously. But I was very serious. He never will realize it. He will never realize it not because there's anyone else. Or because he doesn't think he's not putting forth his best effort. I know at the root of my uji breath, his effort, unlike all other aspects of our connected life, is misaligned.

It was a two hour conversation with lots of time to talk about lord knows what. But tucked in there like an eight year old at bedtime, was the place of work. I said I'd struggled so to find purpose in a year that's brought a lot of unemployment. And how I'd learned through introspection and good friends, that my earthly purpose is supremely more important than just a job. As much as that man can talk, he didn't say anything. Until he did. "Rebecca I can't really agree with you. For me, my job is everything. It's first. It comes before anything else. After family. No, before family. They are my family. Everything else is second. And that will never change."

No, no, it certainly never will.

And in the simplest way, our interconnectivity unwhined like a summer camp friendship bracelet through the heat of the tepid air. We are so very different.

I woke up early this morning. I hadn't slept if at all last night, worried, anxious, hesitant, about a job interview today. I'd been up late preparing, and couldn't settle in to sleep. I woke up to an alarm, followed moments later by a phone call from my grandma, "I need you to take me to the hospital."

In that second of pause, of finding my uji breath and trying to wake my sleepfilled eyes, two hours of talking to a firefighter beau came back. A fast forwarded tivo induced recollection of everything we'd talked of, of all ways we were the same, and different. My instantaneous response was of rescheduling the interview. Of jumping in clean clothes and getting to her home to take her.

When he calls me back, whenever, if ever that will be, and asks me of the interview - if he remembers, I don't think there's any part of him that would understand how I make the choices I do. As I don't understand the choices he makes. But in rushing to happiness, I seek acceptance that I never will understand him. And in spending any amount trying to do so, I waste time in seeing that my complexity lies in simpleness. Lies in choices. Lies in priorities. Lies in drawing in an uji breath and letting my muscles know that this life, like it drew us to one another, will draw me to someone who, in our indescribable connectivity, chooses me first, too.