“Wasn’t it great
to have a snow day yesterday,” her words are more of a
proclamation than a question. “I got so much stuff done!” This was not my experience; I wasted massive
amounts of time in frustrated hand-wringing over the fact that the weather
spent the week dashing my best laid plans.
While I finally made it to my yoga mat to hear my instructor’s delight
in this unexpected respite, all my attempts to attend exercise classes during
the week were either thwarted or aborted by snow. She spent her day in frenzied productive
bliss; I wallowed, insipid and conflicted, unable to regroup with any kind of
positive energy.
I’m an alpha dog, a friend
observes. This is not news to me. I used
to think I just like to be in charge. I’m
discovering now that I have pretty much put myself in places where I am in
charge. This, I’m
learning, makes me horribly out of practice in situations where I am second in
command or expected to partner. And worse yet, I am dissident, defiant and literally
unable to bear it when my partner doesn’t see it
or do it my way. How humbling and
embarrassing. Any skills in diplomacy,
arbitration or mediation escape me. I am desperate to recoup them; the
alternatives are non-starters. Submission leaves me feeling marginalized,
dominance is hollow.
When I think about my alphaness, it’s more
than not being able to follow along, it’s this
feeling that my ability to put my time to my definition of “good use” is
stripped from me. I don’t know
how to handle it.
Ambition is a cruel catalyst. There is so much I want to
create and achieve in this life. I abhor what I view as the necessary nuisances
required to keep me going. I have trained myself to shut it down and sleep at
night only because my body flips on the irritation switch when I’ve been
awake too long. It’s the same thing with eating.
I’m mad that my hips and knees won’t let me
run anymore, as I believe this is the biggest bang for my buck when it comes to
maintaining fitness. It’s the
original moving meditation and I’m bitter
that this fulfilling practice is no longer an option for me. I long for the “Born to
Run” life of barefoot
footfalls and chomping on chia seeds. And this alpha dog misses the family
dog. She was my reason for getting
outside and walking at least once a day, if not twice.
I overhear my nephew in a conversation about Stephen
Hawking. His matter-of-fact comment is “the guy’s body just
crapped out on him”.
These words come from an 18-year old who has never walked. What rich
perspective.
I’ve been told I don’t like
change. I ask myself if that’s really true. I have weathered massive amounts of change,
both forced upon me and ignited by me. The transforming is unsettling and
emotional, but I can’t in all honesty call myself
resistant. Sure I wish I used the stereo
enough to remember how all the buttons work.
Same with the technology in the conference rooms. But I don’t think
this is so much a resistance to change as it is a frustration with my own
limitations and an impatience for any learning curve taking time away from my
relentless drive to get to what is important to me.
Yoga is good for me in that it begs me to slow down and be
kind to myself. The 90 minutes is excruciating,
not because the room is too hot or the exercise is too difficult, but because
time is such a precious commodity. Can’t I get
the benefits without investing so much time?
The answer, of course, is no. The instructors always say the postures we
hate the most are the ones we need the most.
Apparently I need the whole damn 90-minute experience. And so this is yet
another gift yoga presents to me. It just may explain why I am compelled to go
to class while at the same time repelled by the time it demands of me.
Maybe the lesson here is striving to create the best
experience possible wherever life dictates I spend my time? I don’t eat
lunch with friends. Breakfast, if I eat it, is shoved down behind the steering
wheel. People talk about sitting down at the family table for dinner at night,
resurrecting this lost art of connecting over a meal. What if this happened
three times a day?
The other lesson is gratitude. Every alpha dog doesn’t always
get her day. But lots of great stuff comes her way every day. Maybe if she was
brave enough to step into the paws of a beta dog or even an omega dog she would
learn how to be instead of do?
Stephen Hawking says, “Intelligence
is the ability to adapt to change.” A snow day seems like a safe place to start.
