I Sat in a Window Today
I
sat in a window today. I should start
off by telling you that I live in a three hundred year old farmhouse in a
suburb of Philadelphia with deep, full windowsills. The house sits on a golf course in a quiet
neighborhood near one of the busiest highways in the area. In the winter, the stillness of the snow is
like shaking the hand of Divinity. In the
spring, the smell of rain is like my mother’s kitchen, safe and soothing. The green grass that delights my feet with
their soft brush in the summer months offers me a glimpse of the Afterworld and
the tastes of the fall harvest while the orange sky dips lower in the autumn
sky is pure bliss. But I digress. I sat in a window today.
Sitting by window by Abbat from Pixabay
I came in from my hectic job as a library account manager at a book distributor- a “real” job that I traded in my not-so-lucrative but oh-so-rewarding yoga practice for- and, while juggling first my mother and then my grandmother on the cordless phone, I made a quick vegetarian dinner. My husband came in and napped until we set down to a meal that was ate too quickly with not enough conversation to aid in the digestion process. After a brief disagreement (I hesitate to use argument), he went back to the couch while I proceeded to unwind by unloading and reloading the dishwasher and then doing some pots by hand. Very unwinding. Or not. While I straightened up, my mind wondered to those days of yoga that I left behind to help make ends meet.
I taught one class a day, five to six days a week, and made seventeen or so thousand dollars a year. It was fulfilling in many ways and devastating in others. The class I loved the most was the one I taught for free. I taught it for the love of sharing yoga. Everywhere else I went, it was teach this or teach that; don’t meditate because it may offend some of the students. The love became a job and, before I knew it, I was walking away from all of my classes and going back to my library training. I still do yoga and for a select few in the privacy of my home studio, but my practice is gone.
With sadness brewing like a strong cup of coffee, I put the kettle on and made a mug of peppermint tea to try and quell the nausea that washed over me. While my husband slept, I quietly walked up the narrow steps and went to my upstairs studio. Peaceful with it’s walls of sage green, I stood alone, momentarily wishing for the calm of meditation to come and still me, but nothing. With a heavy heart, I turned and walked away.
Once back downstairs with the lights out, the last light of the spring evening slipped in through the windows. The rain and light fog moved in between the trees like ribbons on a maypole, swaying lazily in the breeze. Tea in hand, I went to the living room and was drawn to the windowsill overlooking the pond behind our house. In moments, my bare feet pressed against one wall, while my back leaned against the other. The window was open and I leaned against its cool wood, while nature filled my view. The sounds, the smell, the wind. I sat in a window today.
The last rays of day pierced the rainy sky as I watched the stream run into the swelling pond. When I leaned against the window, the sounds were sheer, like chiffon, the rain tapping the water of the pool that several species of plants and numerous fish and ducks call home. When I moved to get a better view of a mallard swimming by, my ears were freed and the sounds became louder as the sound of the rushing stream carrying the rain’s bounty to the overflowing pond inundated my senses. A second duck swam by. A bird called. All while I sat, quiet, barely breathing, in the window.
I saw a rabbit- at least I think I did. It was getting darker. Maybe, it was a frog. Maybe it was the Great Spirit. My mind cleared and the vision hopped. I saw in it all those things impeding my stillness: my faults, my indecisions, my lack of patience, my Irish temper- me, in all of my humanness. I saw the vision move and, then, it was gone, as though it had never existed in the first place. It was quiet for a moment. Pure and utter quiet.
Sister Star shone overhead, trying to peek through a smattering of sky that nudged through the clouds, while Brother Wind tickled my face with his laugh. I closed my eyes and for once in my day- in my life- I was still. Truly still. At peace. I sat in a window today.
How familiar is all of this? How often do we get up and rush through the day, only to be so exhausted that stillness eludes us and instead we offer ourselves up to the gods of slumber rather than the goddesses of inner peace? Why are we so willing to put our soul’s rest behind that of our bodies? How many times do we use yoga as an unwitting and unwilling partner in our deception, as we imitate and struggle for calm, all the while focusing on how to deepen the asana instead of how to deepen ourselves? Daily, we see people who focus on their physical well being without pausing to think of the well being of their ethereal selves. I can’t count the times recently that I have ran off to the gym to swim a few laps so that I can flirt with relaxation afterwards with a (quick) yoga session that is more to stretch than to come home to tranquility. While yoga teaches us and prepares us for that pause, how many of us truly heed its call?
Each day is a new step for me. I started teaching yoga in the winter of 2000, yet many principles escaped me and evade me still. Many times, in trying to give serenity to my students, I could not find what I worked so hard for: calm. It wasn’t until the end of my formal teaching that the letting go of the stumbling blocks of teacher versus everlasting student came to me. I didn’t adopt vegetarianism until last year when I finally saw myself as part of the circle of life- as a sister to all my brothers and sisters in creation. I didn’t find a touch of stillness until tonight. I sat in a window. If I’m lucky, I’ll remember this moment and I’ll sit in that window every day.
This article was initially published in the July/August 2004 edition of Yoga Living.
