FAILURE, COURAGE, AND HEARTACHE// On Being Where You Are

First person view looking down at feet and a black fluffy cat standing on a cork yoga mat from Yoloha Yoga. Photography by Leah Williams

Accepting where you’re at is tender, but that softening brings you back to the moment and into your body. When we want something to be different than it is we miss out on our lives. Wanting uncomfortable feelings to pass, or waiting for a moment in the future, is wishing your life away. The future may never come, your life is now- in exactly the current state you’re in.

How can we breathe into every experience, even what’s seemingly undesirable or intolerable?

Loving someone or something is the most vulnerable thing we can possibly do. To love with your whole heart, opens the possibility of pain, heartache, rejection, and regret. The depth of our love may end up being the depth of heartache. It can be devastating in equal measure.

The after effects of disappointment or grief are not always because you failed or that something or someone is no longer with you, but because you opened your heart. When you invest your whole heart in something you believe in, whether it’s a relationship, job, pet, cause, home, and it doesn’t turn out how you expect, maybe instead of focusing on loss, you can see how beautiful it is that you care and have feelings- that you showed up, followed your heart. That this isn’t a sign of weakness, coming up short or failure, but that the depth of these feelings reflect that you cared about something or someone that by nature has no guarantee. These feelings are the other side of trying, courage, love, and caring.

We are resilient. Hearts heal, embarrassment passes, and life can be short.

Life is happening to us now. Change is unavoidable and everything is transient. Whether you seek out change or it happens upon you, it can be experienced as both grief and new beginnings. If we’re open and willing, any experience can be a chance to grow and learn, to deepen your experience of being in the present exactly as it is. And when we have uncomfortable feelings, what if we feel how beautiful they all are. Breathing into your body, bringing you back home, to the present moment.

This cork yoga mat is ethically made by YOLOHA.

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