Moving Endlines

The more I practice yoga, the harder it becomes. This situation is both unexpected and counter-intuitive.

What I have discovered is that the further I am able to physically push and maneuver myself, the more aware I become of how much further I could go. It is as though the proverbial end-line is being perpetually moved a greater distance away.

This “obvious” observation is actually quite a revelation for me. At least, I always knew there would be new yoga poses that would be extremely challenging (and many that may never be possible), but I also made what I deemed to be a reasonable assumption: I assumed that the more I practiced, the easier the “basic” poses would become.

And yet that is utterly not the case.

A “beginner” pose might come easily to me for weeks and then one day something shifts and I am aware of how little I have understood about the pose itself. Suddenly, it becomes clear that my grasp on this pose has been very shallow, and that the depths of it are actually fathomless. As I push myself further and further into what may seem to be a simple bend, I am aware of how much further I could go; I am aware of that end -line moving away.

I am left questioning how I could have been so naïve as to believe that I mastered something which I am decidedly and indelibly so very far from mastering.

And so it is with life as well.

What I mean is that it seems as though the more I learn, the more I realize how much I just do not know. Indeed, the more I learn, the more I realize how fantastically uninformed I am about pretty much everything—and especially regarding those things about which I was formerly “certain.”

I used be thrilled when a revelation inspired a comforting evaluation of: “Aha! Yes, I get it. Done.” But such a reaction seems to be a thing of the past. Now I seem to answer every question with a string of questions (I am a super fun conversationalist these days), and I find that I feel uncomfortable with neat little answers. Rather disquietingly, my old quests of seeking—presumably obtainable—confirmation are being replaced with a new pattern.

The best way I can describe my current state of being is that a new concept might unexpectedly occur to me, sort of rain down on me, and in its wake, I am left with small puddles of ideas all over the place.

The thing is that what I initially perceive to be self-contained little wading pools are each, upon a closer look, actually as vast as the Atlantic Ocean. It seems that before I only allowed myself to see—or was only able to see--these tiny, boundaried puddles. When I finally actually looked beyond the boundaries I placed on them, I realized how limitless they all actually are. Thus, I realized how small I was making my world.

Now it is wonderful, in some ways, to imagine the infinite possibilities in life. But it is also more that a bit daunting. As in: with such expansive areas to consider, how will I ever figure ANYTHING out?

The thing is, I may not.

And, in keeping with my yoga example, it is the most basic knowledge that I feel I “had” that is being called into question more and more . . . and so I wonder what I know about anything.

But what does anyone know about anything? If life is a big game, and we are all creating our own realities then there are countless truths and interpretations to be had about virtually everything we encounter in life. Right?

What is especially strange for me right now is that I feel I am out-growing being a “Type-A.” I mean, that seems weird. It is not like giving away an old pair of jeans; it is a shedding of an integral definable aspect of who I am as a person. Do we outgrow these things? I seem to be. At least, I used to treat everything in my life as a puzzle to be solved, a destination to be reached, a goal to be achieved. I wanted definable end points and clear assessments of my performances.

But what good is such a philosophy when you think about it? Because what happens once you have solved, arrived, or won? Then what? Game over? Neat little packages, the contained little wading pools, are certainly safer and make the world an easier place in which to be, but I am finding that I do not want to make my world so small and controllable (though the temptation will likely arise from time to time—if for no other reason than it is my default setting).

So now it seems that more “solutions” I have, the more questions they beseech.

Along those lines, I was talking yesterday to my wonderfully perceptive friend Doug. We were just two old friends, catching up and enjoying a light and fluffy conversation about death. Doug is a teacher of mindfulness and someone who has what I find to be an inspiring and enlightened perspective on life. Over the course of our friendship both of our fathers have died—his much more recently—and that circumstance was the impetus for some of our conversation topics. At one point, I was driveling on about how death is a transformation and is not a negative entity and I realized I sounded like I was death’s hired PR personnel. Realizing that my words sounded like a strange sales pitch, I qualified by saying “Not that I am dying or anything.”

A few minutes later, Doug said,” You said you were not dying, but you are. We all are.”

I started to say, “No, what I meant was that I am not dying NOW.”

But I am, aren’t I?

So then I wonder: Aren’t I living rather than dying?

But am I?

I think I confused myself sufficiently. What I do know is that what used to be a closed book issue for me—death--is now a wide open canyon of possibility. I used to feel so separate from death. But what is it really? A departure, a rebirth, a good bye, a hello, a transformation? And what is life?

The crazy thing is that if I thought I knew anything for absolute certain, it was that I knew I was living a real life. Now I wonder: how could I ever have presumed to have known THAT?

So, was I crazy then…or am I crazy now? That is the question of the day, folks.

Maybe it is like with the yoga pose where I falsely believe to have “mastered” it, only to realize that what I do know is only scraping the surface. And the end-line is nowhere in sight.

Remember when I used to just write silly stories about my dogs and we would all have a good laugh?