La Buddhiste Francaise

Just started reading BKS Iyengar’s Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom. Not even finished with the first chapter and never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be impacted so much.

I go through life so caught up in my mental being. Constantly thinking, constantly analyzing. Constantly judging myself. I see every single thing that’s going wrong in my life and feel so alone in it all. Like I’m the only one experiencing these types of things. It makes mountains out of molehills, but I don’t even realize it.

Things going on in my life seem so large, so expansive, so monumental in a bad way. I fixate on them. ‘Oh my gosh, look at everything that I have going against me. Look at all these things that I’m responsible for, that I have to handle in my life.’ It’s overwhelming and brings me down. Shuts down my system until I struggle to complete the most minute of tasks if any at all.

But the beginning of this book changed my perspective on this. Even though I don’t hear about anyone else dealing with issues like mine doesn’t mean that they don’t have them as well. Being reminded that the basic needs of humans, their responsibilities day-to-day, haven’t really changed in thousands of years, brought it home to me.

Do I have rough days at work in order to provide for my family. Heck yeah. Did families in the Wild, Wild West also have rough days at work as they were providing for their families? Absolutely. The specifics of the rough day are most definitely different, however you can’t deny the fact that as long as there have been jobs to provide for your family, there are been rough days. I’m not alone. Others have gone through it. And so can I. It really is as simple as that.

And this thought process applies to all aspects of my life- raising children, nurturing a relationship, caring for aging parents, keeping my sanity and mental clarity throughout it all.

We really haven’t changed all that much over the thousands of years of human existence. All these trials and tribulations that make me freeze up are completely normal for humans. And just knowing they are normal really helps me get through them as I go through my days.