In The Process Of What To Do Next

I am facing the end of my contract in Manila in three months and I don't know what I will do next. This is upsetting to me. I'm afraid of struggles I foresee with my family and with myself about my future. And practically speaking I need to figure something out for September. To be perfectly honest I don't have a plan for the rest of my life. I am very happy with what I am doing right now and, because of that, I am grateful for the path I've taken to get here though certainly there have been challenges. This doesn't mean that I am set on doing the same thing in the same place in the same way forever, far from it. But, being happy with the current situation and acknowledging that I have had no preconceived "Master Plan" that has brought me here, I am questioning the necessity of having such a plan at all - or maybe of having a plan that meets the approval of those whose approval I have sought in the past.

Imagining how my life looks through the eyes of my parents, my current situation teaching yoga in Manila is a diversion, something I'm getting out of my system so I can (finally) settle down and get my life on track once this escapade is over. (This is not just idle imagination, if I may quote my parents as I left for Manila, "Well dear, we think this should be a good way for you to get this yoga thing out of your system and then when you get home you can get back on track.") And I have been conditioned enough by my life's intertwining with theirs to still buy into that a bit - to the extent that I'll let them believe it. Maybe I need to continue to let them believe that. Really it's their beliefs, what I want them to believe doesn't much affect what they do believe! There's a major problem with this, however: When I reach a mile marker like the end of this contract, up come the old issues of getting on track, having a plan, and abandoning living my life in the current reckless whimsical fashion.

I love to look back at my memories of my past, how I thought and viewed the world, the assumptions I made and which limited me. To paraphrase Gibran, the shell that enclosed my understanding. It makes me all the more aware that that shell is still alive and well and curious to find out what the next revelation will be as I recognize and break through another aspect of that shell. Is it a shell at all? Maybe a series of shells, or perhaps the malleable and enveloping curtain of my own mind protecting me, keeping me safe within the scope of ideas that are safe for me to live in at the moment, not unlike a parent, sometimes overprotecting me but nevertheless well-intentioned and something I accept as a part of myself even as I seek to melt it away with the light of understanding. So once upon a time I believed that my parents defined the plan for my life. A set of assumptions based on careful observation and listening, the plan involved becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a businessperson or a professor or some other clearly-defined professional. My task was to select which one of these boxes into which to fit myself. I tried several of them out, none of them fit - perhaps because the empty shell of a person I was, so very little self-knowledge and self-love within that tiny shell of understanding, could never be happy anywhere. A vague inkling that there might be more to life and to myself, but afraid of the unknown.

I think the greatest benefit I have gained from practicing yoga is the recognition of the possibility of breaking that shell, and the courage to break it. Sure it's great what while I couldn't do splits at 10 I finally achieved the flexibility to do them at 30, wonderful that I so rarely get sick, and I love being able to take a 3-day, 160-mile bike ride every year with no actual in-the-saddle training and walk away from it feeling strong, healthy and uninjured. But for some reason the regular facing of myself in the mirror as I was pushed to my physical and mental limits made it impossible not to question the assumption I had made about having to fit into the current box - as I found in yoga something new, beautiful, and powerful. Something that had never been even remotely available as an acceptable track for me, but nevertheless interesting to me on a far deeper, more soulful level than anything else. And so to pursue it I took my first tentative steps out of the land of the boxes, amongst which I might have unhappily bounced for the rest of my life.

Opening my awareness to possibilities in life not defined by those boxes I gleaned from my parents was a step. Immediately I wanted my parents to accept the new possibilities. Wanted them to - I had no illusions that they would, but the desire was there. And I may always desire this approval. I love them and I want them in my life. I suppose that the latest shell I'm seeing is the willingness to be rattled by the pressure to get back into one of the old boxes. I have to take care of myself - and in three months I need to find a new situation where I can support myself (and my cat) as comfortably and fulfillingly as I have been doing in Manila. So that's the plan for now. And without worrying whether my parents approve, perhaps developing a vision that's truly in line with what's in my heart! Because there is tremendous value in having a plan, it just has to be your own plan. I think I've been having trouble because I've been trying to come up with plans for others. Eventually, as I am doing, the parents may even learn to trust my approval of myself.