It’s June.
It’s the END of June.
And I am still struggling with finding my rhythm in the “new normal.” I guess it takes a little time to readjust… like it did in the beginning.
This pandemic has unsettled me on a lot of levels. It has revealed the schism between what I know intellectually, and what I know through experience. The difference is more than discovering your favorite restaurant has a new menu. This morning I’ve been trying to put my finger on what has changed. I’ve been trying to find words to describe the dissonance I feel, my even more than usual difficulty in “going with the flow.”
The pandemic created a disruption in what we used to take for granted. As I try to break it down, it’s not just the momentum of life that has changed. It’s not exactly that it changed the direction of our course. It’s not just that we stopped doing some things and took up doing new things. It’s not just that the rhythm of our days and weeks have changed.
Something fundamental about the quality, the experience of life has changed.
In our isolation, WE have changed. Our bodies’ chemistry has changed, so our perceptual apparatus has changed; our cognitive processes have changed. Our perspective as social beings, members of society, has changed. Our sense of time has changed. Our ideas of what’s “normal” or what “should” be have changed.
Our priorities may have changed. Therefore our strategies and tactics may need to change.
What we think we used to be, what we thought we wanted or wanted to be has changed so deeply, and so subtly.
The “in-between” has changed. The unspoken has changed. What is implicit and explicit has changed.
It’s not like I wanted to be a chef before and now I want to be a doctor. It’s more like what it means to be a chef or how it feels to be a doctor has fundamentally, indescribably changed.
I’m dealing with these things. I think that for some people, their role and purpose in life are more clearly defined by the relationships that define them… their roles in a family, in a business, etc. For me, even those feel like they are shifting. There is no solid ground. I circle back to my oldest and deepest friendships and my most intimate relationships. They are as rock solid as ever. But I’m starting to see through the illusion of permanence.
A friend tells me that this is what our yoga training has prepared us for. So I return to practice. I hope you’ll join me.
because.yoga 