Hi Friends and Yogis! This is my first official blog! Thanks for reading and for coming to Y4ES classes for you!! I want to write a book and I'm told writing a blog is a great way to make connections so here goes.... Why is this blog called Carrying the Poop? Because that is going to be the title of one of my books! It will be a book all about my life experiences in short one page stories and the life lesson I drew from them. Here is the first story about carrying the poop.
It was a bright and sunny Summer day and I went out for my daily walk with my dog, Sosa. We walked along enjoying the beautiful sky and puffy clouds and gentle breeze. I said "Hello!" to the mailman and I cleared my mind of any worries to enjoy this lovely time outside. Then Sosa paused, sniffed, turned in a few circles and pooped. As usual I got out my poop bag, scooped it up and tied a nice knot and we continued on our way. On this day in particular though I became really aware of the fact that I was holding a bag of poop. It was a little heavy (a bigger dump than usual) and I could smell the not-s- lovely odor. I started to feel like I really just wanted to get rid of it as fast as I could. I began to think about all of the turmoil running in my head about carrying this bag of poop and forgot about the lovely day that I was, not two minutes ago, really enjoying. So, I began thinking of this as a great life analogy---my usual stream of thought. Here I am carrying this poop. Yes. It is in my hand and I don’t really like carrying it but can I go ahead and carry it and still enjoy this nice walk with my great dog and the beautiful day? Can I have crap that I am carrying around and still be content? We all carry some crap around in our minds; you know, the things in life that we don’t really like or enjoy or even hate and want to get rid of. We can choose to focus on them or not. In that moment we do not have to focus all of our attention on it. So, I continued to think about this and how I wished to get rid of the poop that I was carrying. I began to look for a trash can to put it in but there wasn’t one around. I thought “What if I put it in someone’s yard and just walk away?” Then I would be making my poop someone else’s problem to handle. I thought “It could be worse. I could have forgotten the bags and could be holding the poop directly in my hand! Instead, it is in this bag so, I can neatly hold it over here as something separate and do something about it later.” What a great opportunity for me to come to the present moment. I began enjoying the walk even more... looking around with Sosa when he paused to rest under a tree, looking at the shapes in the clouds and taking deep breaths of contentment in this moment. I enjoyed the rest of the walk, forgetting (almost) completely about the bag of poop. When I got home I threw it in the trash with a sigh. “That was easy.” I thought and continued on with my day.
