Musings of Palm Tree Trimmings

I've stayed home completely this week. Cooking, cleaning, painting and putting away palm tree leaves. Even though I quit my full time job in October 2012, I have stayed busy with part time work, a semester at UNLV, and yoga teacher training. Since the SO is back to work as of yesterday after a month hiatus between jobs, I am now the sole daytime guardian of the children of Summer; those little people who wake up early on Saturday and Sunday; late on Tuesday; want to live in Cartoonland and turn into bottomless goblins.

Today I taught yoga at 530 a.m. and came home to the usual duties. I ended up tackling work in the back yard. While I poked myself with big thorns and cursed (admittedly not yogi behavior) I held some thoughts about my past lives. Recounting what in retrospect, seems like quite a full life already.

I've seen dead people. Up close and personal. I have touched and medically handled them. That's not so bad. Death is peaceful. It's telling the family that is hard. I've seen people dying. That's harder; especially when they die alone. I've seen people wake up from a long sleep to know everyone they loved and cared for was no longer here on Earth.  I've seen too many mothers be told their babies won't make it, and shared the grief of even more too many who have bid good bye to their babes too soon. I've been there for some closer to me when those unthinkable sorrowful moments have happened.  I've rescued drowning children and hauled drunks out of the strip in Las Vegas on New Years Eve.

I've worked in hospitals, prisons, courtrooms and visited the homes of killers who warn you they could kill you if they wanted to, or seen them in jail interviews room where the same could happen by the time help arrives.

I'm 30. I'm picking palm tree leaves and stuffing them in bags; breaking only to cut more fruit up because breakfast was an hour ago and there are cries of hunger, yet again. 

I've seen enough. Palm tree pickings are easy times, even peaceful happy times.

Any more than those memories hardens me. It changes me. That's why when I worked I ran to yoga 2 times a day between double workload. I over-trained myself into injuries doing crazy things to relieve the stress. All the years of studying policy and political science and all I realized at the end is: without money and without will there is no changing, and there is little will and too much money spent on other things.

From my years in the legal field I came to believe it was just a well-oiled machine. For all my 14 hour days and sleepless nights, in the end it made little difference to the system and the people involved on both ends, aside from a couple extraordinary times when we rocked the boat, the times that keep many others going.

I trim palm trees. Make lunch, mop floors and review summer work. I play with water, I snuggle on the couch.

Still, I make more of a difference now, solving disputes over make believe, guiding a class through breathing, or guiding my own breathing when I write in the middle of a hide-and-seek operation in full force.  I have a chance to change the world. I can change my world when I live practicing peace. I can hopefully make a small impact in the life of a fellow yogi, even if it's only for a day. I can make this summer memorable for my kids by slowing down, if you can call being home for the summer, slowing down.

I'm 30, and I have seen enough to realize there is no additional benefit in living life stressfully for success.  Do what you love, don't let it get it to you, because in the end, life is about connecting to our inner happiness and figuring out that being happy with ourselves is more fulfilling than any paycheck or an ego boost of self-importance.