March 15-One Year, One Day at a Time-Remarkable

Slept late – 7:20 am, really late for us.  Morning yoga at Tejas.  We walked down to the studio on Wabash, just around the corner, with our friend and host, Felix, and set up in the front row of the studio.  Good solid class.  My body needed it.  Away from the mat since Tuesday, biopsy on Wednesday, results on Thursday, 8 hour car ride Friday and lots of sitting Friday night.  Oh yes, yoga and pranayama and meditation.  Amen.

Jimmy made plans to spend the afternoon with his buddy, Tommy, who lives in Fort Sheridan.  I was ambivalent about going but dressed and hopped in the car.  6 blocks down Michigan Avenue, caught in the pedestrian traffic from the St Patty’s Day Parade, I turned to Jimmy and said, “Honey, I am going to get out here and walk.”  He grimaced, but did not try  to  dissuade me.  I knew that I wanted an afternoon to myself, an afternoon to sit and people watch, to write and, most importantly, to be with me.  I like me.  We have fun together.  We get each other.  We enjoy silence.  No need for talking or outside stimuli.
Walked, observed for a few blocks then decided I needed to eat something so I stopped at an upscale diner for brunch, omelet and potatoes.

Sat for two hours drinking a latte, savoring every sip, writing haiku on the back of my large paper menu/placemat.  Then headed back to the condo, moseying along Michigan Ave taking in the sights and enjoying the fresh air.  Back on the 15th floor, I posted several of my haikus, answered some emails, bathed, messed with my hair, which is definitely on a new trajectory, one that is baffling and entertaining at the same time.  My hair is the lloudest external expression of who and what I am on the inside.  Let’s see what you think.

Bundled up and ready for the birthday party in Evanston I went out to the corner to hail a cab.  Five minutes later I was still waving when I nice young man suggested I cross the corner and his friend would help me.  It worked.  I had a cab within seconds and was speeding down Michigan Avenue, now practically deserted, green people all down for the count or at least off the sidewalks, toward Olgilvie Station.  Had no tdouble finding the North Line and buying my ticket.  It was a pleasant ride spent visiting with a family from Virginia in Chicago to be with their son/nephew/grandson for his graduation from naval school.  There were lots of p-coated young men on the train all of whom looked to be enjoying a day of liberty before returning to base.

Arrived safely at Central Station, where Jimmy fetched me.  From there to an evening of festivities.  Odd, but fun.  A little too organized for my liking but then it was not my party.  Lots of presentations.  I do mean lots.  Some, Deborah’s song in particle,r were very well done.  Others not so much.

Driving home in the snow, Jimmy and I reflected on how simple our lives have become.  I told him about my conversation with Lila, Joe’s first wife, Reggie’s mother, “Jimmy and I do not talk much during the day.  Even though we are both working from home.  Our house is very quiet. We eat lunch together, work and pass by one another throughout the day without much interaction. I love it.”  She laughed and said, “You don’t talk and you are  there in the house together all day?”  I smiled and paused before sharing one of my favorite stories about Jimmy and my earliest times together.  “Lila, one afternoon, Jimmy and I were walking in the park.  We had enjoyed a nice afternoon together.  Ready to stop for a moment we found a park bench and sat gazing at the sunset.  You know what I noticed?  We sat for a long time without saying a word.  Nothing.  And I was happy.  There was no need to “make conversation. I felt deeply connected to him in the silence of that moment.”

So here I am at the computer.  Jimmy is off with our friend and yoga teacher, Jim Bennitt, exploring Chicago coffee haunts.  What will March 16 bring?  Well here is the first news flash.  Just got a test from Jimmy with a pic. Check it out.  Remarkable.

Dharma, A Vehicle to Know the World

Dharma is a path of action, one that is embedded in the cells of your body.  My dharma is writing.  I have other gifts, other talents.  I teach yoga.  I am life coach.  I use the tools of yoga, my intuition and my life experience to help others over come tough obstacles.  I’s pretty good at.  At least that is the feed back I get from my clients.  But the one thing I love more than any other is writing.  When I write I know I am connecting to a part of me that lives in the very morrow of my being.  I am writing.  It is me.

In his book, The Great Work of Your Life, Stephen Cope cites the Bhagavad Gita as the source of all teachings about Dharma, about or sacred duty.  He states that the Gita makes it clear that our biggest obstacle, the thing that separates most from ourselves and our dharma is self-doubt.  He tells us that the yoga tradition has called doubt, “the invisible affliction.”  He goes on to say, “We do not suspect the was in which doubt keeps us paralyzed.”

I spent 61 years of life doubting that I was a writer.  This is the face of every teacher I had telling me I had a gift for writing, for expression, for putting ideas together, and for understanding the human condition.  So what, I thought.  I need to make money.  Only famous writers make money and I will never be famous.  Oh, I wrote off and on throughout my life, usually at times when I felt most lost, most at risk, divorce, abortions, depression, child-bearing and rearing.  But I never sustained a steady practice.  I always gave up and got a job and boy did I have some awful jobs.  I was a clerk at Blockbuster.  I waited tables.  I worked for catering companies serving food at other people’s parties and taking home the left overs.  I worked as a clerk in a chauvinistic law firm.  I ran a cheese shop.  I sold kitchen equipment.  I worked for an orthodontist digging around in the grungy mouths of kids with braces who did not brush their teeth.  I worked in theatre as a props manager, a publicist, and a box office manager.

I did have one job I absolutely loved.  I worked for the man who is now my husband.  He opened and operated one of the first natural food stores in the mid-south, Squash Blossom Natural foods.  I was either his second or third employee and I worked for him pretty consistently for over 8 years.  People thought we were married and that we ran the store together, which we did, run the store, but we were not married, to each other.  Anyway, it was a great job.  I loved it until I could not do it any more.  Jimmy and I had an affair and as hard as we tried we could not keep our lives on track.  He remarried a woman who hated me and banned me from the store, and I went back to my husband and children.  For the longest time I believed I would never again have meaningful work.  Had I known then about Dharma, I would have told you that mine had been stolen from me.  I was wrong.

I opened a yoga studio in 2001.  All the great teachers came, Rodney Yee, Cyndi Lee, Richard Freeman, Shiva Rea, Doug Keller, Rod Stryker, and others less well-known.

Midtown Yoga was and still is a gathering place in the heart of midtown Memphis.  Great teachers, excellent classes, very successful.  I hated it. I was miserable the entire time I ran the studio.  I worked too hard, worried too much, struggled to be the very best leader I could be, but I was not cut out for the job.  I made money, the studio did extremely well, but I suffered and suffered and suffered until finally I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  A lumpectomy, radiation and recovery required that I give up some things, but I did not quit working.  Anyway, that was then, this is now.  I sold the business in January, 2013.  What a relief.  I tried for so long to make something that I was really good at my dharma.  The Bhagavad Gita talks about doing that.  Pretty much says it is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of someone else.   Each of us is unique in that way.  We each have a destiny, gift to give.  Mine is writing.  I see that now.  How do I know?

I know writing is my dharma because 1. I embrace it fully without reservation.  No more doubt.  2. Writing consumes me. I am utterly committed to this work.  I will never give up.  I am passionate about writing therefore, for the first time, I am passionate about living.  3. I have given up being famous or even successful.  I write because I must.  I have no idea where writing will ultimately take me, but I am going regardless.  4.  Because writing, my words, my inspirations, the energy I have to write all come from my Soul.  When words and ideas present themselves to me, I sit down and write.  I never know where it will go.  I love that about writing.  It is always an adventure.

My dharma, your dharma. . . . .it all boils down to the same thing and here I must, once again quote Stephen Cope, who I consider to be one of the world’s best writers. Of dharma he says this:

“Dharma eventually takes on  a life of its own.  It does things spontaneously that you had no reason to expect. It begins to drill down into the deepest parts of your mind.  Soon you begin to see that this dharma is not just any old stick of bamboo.  It is a magic wand.  A wish-fulfilling wand.  It is a way to know – to interact with, to be in relationship with – the deepest parts of yourself.  It is a vehicle to know the world.”

Writing is the vehicle through which I know the world.  What is yours?  Do not squander you life.

January 1….One Year, One Day at a Time

Day one.  Of what I do not know.  What will each day bring?  Curiously, I write tonight of what and who I am now.  I am tired and hung over.   We stayed out late last night and I have absolutely no idea how much I had to drink.  I remember my glass always being full.  Yuck.  It was a terrific party.  Wonderful people, good food or at least I guess it was good.  I did not eat a bite..  Not true.  I did eat 2 deviled eggs, a pickle and a handful of chex mix. Part of writing, One year, One day at a Time, really the biggest part of it for me is honesty.  NO bull shit.  No little white lies about how much I did not did not drink, what I think or feel.  To the best of my ability I will report things as they are.

I did start my book today.  That sounds and looks so weird.  Do I have self-doubt?   You bet I do.  Who do I think I am to write a book?  Me, that’s who.  I am just going to do it.  Plain and simple.  The only failure is not trying.  I will write it, a novel.  I started today.  I really did and I will continue tomorrow and the next and the next because the second biggest part of One year, One day at Time is that I will work on this novel every day, no matter what.

Lastly, I will blog each day evening about my experiences during the day…like a journal, but with a little editing.  I got up at 7:30 am which is late for me.  I guess I slept in because we did not go to bed until after 1:00 am.  I took two Advil to relieve a lingering headache.  Drinking too much is definitely not fun.  Last night was the first time I have done that in as long as I can remember.  I just do not drink much anymore.  I prefer to be clear, level-headed, alert, to remember what I did and to feel good the next day.  I am sure I would have had just as much fun last night without the extra drinking.  Oh well, “Next.”  I use that word to remind myself when it is time to move on.  Like when your mother told you, “There is no use crying over spilled milk.”  Well, she was right.

I went to the Puja Ceremony at Midtown Yoga.  I started this tradition several years ago.  This was my first year to be a participant.  I did not want to go.  I wanted to see the yoga students and teachers whom I knew would be there, but I also wanted to avoid the pain I knew would accompany my gratitude.  The funniest thing happened.  Each time I started to get sad, I closed my eyes and breathed in the energy of the room and then I had this thought.  “I started this.  I made this possible.  I built Midtown Yoga from the ground up and I am proud of it.”  I have never had that thought before.  I honored myself and the work I did and I was grateful to myself.  Pretty cool.

Around three, my son Jordan, and his partner, Travis came over for a bowl of my famous black bean soup which I made earlier in the day.  They opened their Christmas presents.  We had a nice visit except Jordan kept his face in his phone a good part of the time.  So annoying.  After they left, we went to one more party.  What day is it anyway?  I keep thinking tomorrow is Monday, but it is Thursday.  And now it feels like 10:00 when it is only 7:45.  No alcohol today.  Lots of cranberry juice, ginger ale, water, and more water.

Oh and we watched Mean Girls.

Funny movie.  God we girls can be so catty and mean.  Today I commit not to “word vomit” (tell tales on, spread rumors, say nasty things about others.)  I will watch my tongue.

Day One.  One Year, One Day at a Time.

Money=Happiness?

I opened a yoga studio, MIdtown Yoga, in 2001.

At the age of fifty I started a business at least that is what my husband called it.  There was no business plan because I had no intention of making money.  I simply wanted a space in which I could teach yoga.  People came.  Rodney Yee had just been on the Oprah Winfrey show.  Christy Turlington was on the cover of Time magazine.  Unbeknownst to me, I was riding a wave destined to become a world-wide phenomenon.  Yoga went from something that only hippies and naked Indian gurus did to something celebrities and soccer Moms did to get in shape and relieve stress.

Being a studio owner was hard work.  I taught 14 to 18 public classes a week, managed other teachers, promoted and put on workshops with famous teachers like Rodney Yee, Shiva Rea, Richard Freeman, Cyndi Lee and others.  My bank account grew.  I put my son through college.  He went to NYU.  I bought a new car.  We traveled  to India and across America to study with world-renowned teachers of yoga philosophy and meditation.  My little studio, Midtown Yoga, made a name for itself.  I was successful.

Fast forward to December 2013.  I sold my studio a year ago.  I am one of the lucky ones.  I found a buyer who was willing to take over the studio and pay me for the years of hard work I had put into building and establishing a “yoga business,” two words I never dreamed would come together.  When I began, in 2001, having practiced and taught yoga for several years already, I only knew there was a need and I had the tools to fill it.  As time went on, running Midtown Yoga, became more and more about bringing in more students, promoting visiting teachers, organizing and spear-heading a teacher training program that produced over 100 certified yoga teachers.  I gave myself completely over to the business.  I missed weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, vacations, and lost hours of sleep worrying about the studio.  The passion I once felt for the practice of yoga dwindled.  I started out as a  humble yogini and ended up an over-worked CEO.  I wanted to quit, to find someone, anyone who would take over the business.  I tried unsuccessfully to get my husband to run the business side of the studio.  I delegated responsibility in hopes of finding some relief from the stress and wear and tear, but the truth is, I did not want to give up the income. The more money I made, the more addicted I became. The little girl who grew up with nothing, who never had an allowance, who shop-lifted to get the clothes she so desperately wanted, was now a successful business woman, well-known in the community.  I became so strongly identified with Midtown Yoga that I forgot who I was.  I drank more, played less, and complained a lot about being over-worked.

Three things happened that change the course of my life.  My son died.  He was dead for seven minutes, his heart kept beating only by the CPR he received from a bartender who happened to be in nursing school.  Nothing mattered to me more than his recovery.  Somehow the studio managed without me.  A year later, I found a lump in my left breast.  It was malignant.  I gave myself over to the “cancer industry.”  On the advice of my doctor, I had the lump removed.  After two weeks of recovery, I began 45 days of radiation which left me exhausted and unable to teach yoga.  Again, the studio somehow managed without me.  At that same time, I learned my daughter was pregnant with her first child.  I suddenly realized I no longer cared about the studio or teaching other people how to be happier and healthier.  I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a tired, sad, lonely, and exhausted woman of 59 who wanted her life back, but I was still unwilling to let go of the income stream I had created.

As a product of the sixties, I grew up believing that women were second class citizens.  We voted, we worked, we held public office, but many men still thought a  woman’s place was in the home.  I worked in the private sector as a paralegal.  I was underpaid, “hit on” by one of the partners, told to quit and stay home after the birth of my daughter, and finally driven out of the office by a demotion to subrogation clerk.  So, yes, I was proud of myself for building a successful business, for starting something with nothing (I cashed in a $20.000.00 insurance policy), and for making a name for myself.  When I left my first husband, he told me “I found you in the gutter and that is where you will end up.”  That was not the worst of it.  Because all of our credit was in his name, I had none and did not qualify for a credit card.  When I left him, he gave me $7000.00 and nothing else.  He kept the house, all the furnishings, our dog and my “good name.”

It took me a year of therapy to process money was not the key to happiness.  On the contrary, studies have shown that once we have money enough to meet our basic needs with a little extra for enjoyment, an increase in income does not equal greater happiness.

Money and Happiness
In order to be happy we need enough money to pay our bills and have a little room to purchase extras. There appears to be an income threshold where making more than this amount contributes very little to being happier.

Having a household income below $50,000 is moderately related to happiness. A household income above $50,000 results in a vanishing correlation between money and happiness. There is some data indicating that the income threshold may be a little higher or a little lower than $50,000.

Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations, but people who live in moderately wealthy nations are not much less happy than people who live in extremely wealthy nations (Gilbert, 2007, p. 239). ( excerpted from What Makes us Happy by Jamie Hale)

Bingo.  More money does not correlate to greater happiness.  Then why was I working so hard?  For the same reason so many others do.  We forget what really matters: family, friends, laughter, helping others, being a good neighbor,  and doing what we love to do, not for the money, but for the sheer joy of doing it.

Here I am.  At the computer, doing what I love to do…Writing.  Will I be famous, will I be rich?  The future is not mine to see.  I write because I must.  I write because doing it reminds me what real happiness is for me.

When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother, “What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?”
Here’s what she said to me:

“Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be;
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be.”

When I was just a child in school,
I asked my teacher, “What will I try?
Should I paint pictures”
Should I sing songs?”
This was her wise reply:

“Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be;
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be.”

When I grew up and fell in love.
I asked my sweetheart, “What lies ahead?
Will we have rainbows
Day after day?”
Here’s what my sweetheart said:

“Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be;
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be.”

Now I have Children of my own.
They ask their mother, “What will I be?”
Will I be handsome?
Will I be rich?”
I tell them tenderly:

“Que sera, sera,
Whatever will be, will be;
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera,
What will be, will be.
Que Sera, Sera!

(Lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans))