Introspective

Last night’s yoga class was one of the more difficult ones I’ve faced of late–and not because I’m out of shape. OK, I am out of shape, but the difficulty lay not in the physical aspects of the class, but the mental/emotional ones. The instructor was talking a great deal about accepting your feelings, even the negative ones, and how the goal of yoga was finding your truth/true self, and doing inner work.

I was astonished by how much I found myself resisting. I’m not conveying well what she was saying, but some part of me said, “Grown-ups don’t do that.” Grown-ups don’t try to process difficult emotions–they hide them because they get in the way of being productive. Grown-ups don’t worry about finding their true selves. Grown-ups put up and shut up.

And deep in meditation, I realized how much I run from introspection. I run from it because I don’t want to be one of those stereotypical creative types who wallow in angst. I take perverse pride in not being overly introspective, in fact. It’s “not practical.” My inclination, when faced with a problem, is to act. If I can’t act to solve the problem, I just act. Create something. Make something. Clean something. When my best friend and my aunt died within two weeks of each other, I dug up the front yard and planted a garden. In less extreme instances, I often bake.

This coping mechanism means I get a lot done. It means people, except the Cat-Herder and my very closest friends, are often unaware if I’m tired or in pain or distressed,and I consider that a positive thing: I don’t want to burden anyone with my problems.  It also means I stumble over a lot of bombs hiding in the tall grass and weeds of my mostly wonderful life because I never took the time to disarm them. Even though I’ve been taking yoga for years–and deliberately taking a class that focuses on the deeper aspects of yoga, not just the physical, I don’t “own my truth” because I don’t want to admit I have a dark side, that I have problems at all.

Compared to many people, my problems are minute. My life, while not perfect, is pretty damn spectacular.

But I live in the real world. I feel pain, both physical and emotional, at times. At other times, I’m just tired and overwhelmed. And I suspect I’d be better off if I admitted it rather than trying to “work through it” all the time.