a continuation of my prior post, “Being” 

Do you ever wonder if you’re okay? Like sit with that question and debate it as if academically. I’m very good at this. Especially since its a question that’s often asked of us– it sets us up to give “okay” and “not okay” equal odds.

As a girl with back issues, in tough yoga poses my teacher in Chicago used to ask me this question, to which I would pause indefinitely. I’d be like upside down or forming a human pretzel, and yet I’d think that the correct opportunity to carve out like 30 seconds for my academic level okay-or-not-okay analysis. Finally he said to me “If you have to think about it for that long– you’re okay.”

I guess that’s what I’ve come to realize– when in doubt, we are okay. Being okay isn’t like smelling a peach in the grocery store and trying to figure out if its ripe or not. Its more like taking a breath of air and knowing, even though we can’t see it, that it holds oxygen.

Its also like watching the sky turn so many different of shades of blue throughout the day, watching clouds catch on the mountaintops and then leave them, watching the earth thaw underneath the sun. The concept of okay is transient, and that therein lies its simplicity and grace. Because being sore, bruised, injured, defeated, upset, sad, confused, afraid– these feelings aren’t the same as being not okay.

Moment of Gratitude: So to quote more yoga wisdom, I heard this in a recent class: “We are the sky. Everything else is just the clouds. It comes and goes”. So let us allow life to be as simple and obvious as if we were the sky. No cloud ever able to render us not okay.