“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ~ Rumi
Since graduating from high school I have lived in 6 states, 2 countries and way too many addresses to count. I moved for college, semester abroad, graduate school, internship, cheaper rent, a better neighborhood, better climate, a pet, a partner, a parent, a spouse, an uncoupling.
It’s exhausting to think about. People often snark, “I hate moving.” It digs into the existential pit of our stomach: fear, change, loss, uncertainty, disorganization, effort.
At times as I was finally nestled snugly in my new pad, I was uprooted. Like a house of cards carefully crafted, moving felt like a swift wind toppling it down.
My recent mixed feelings about moving is the reason it took me so long to write this essay — I kept struggling to come up with a summary paragraph that put everything into a tidy box with a peachy-keen moral providing solace for my readers, and myself.
Instead I sat and recalled the sheer hassle of the comings, the goings, and everything in between. Panic while running out of gas near Rock Springs, Wyoming with a U-Haul in the middle of the night. Putting my belongings in a storage unit in Oakland only to discover I couldn’t fit everything (and nearly avoided getting locked-in at midnight trying to cram it in.) The cat that howled constantly for 2 days in the car. The broken & lost items. Needing help from a stranger while in the dessert because I was unable to back-up my moving truck (there is a technique to this). The tears as I watched in the rearview mirror the distance grow between my mountain life and my next chapter Eastward.
Beyond the logistical nightmare of packing your “life” into a bunch of boxes, the dreaded trip to the DMV, and lost mail because friends can’t keep track of your current residence, there is the sense of everything being untethered. Add to that feelings of loss for the era left behind, the rituals created with friends, the inside jokes, the smells in the air, your favorite yoga class. I eventually noticed a pattern: while in the stages of a new era, I longed for the previous one. I noticed my pattern to attach, face change, resist change, surrender to change, reinvent, all only to attach once again. It’s one big cycle. Attachment sucks us in like a gravitational pull whispering “you’ll be safe and sound.”
So what’s my (seemingly depressing) point, to myself and perhaps to you?
Stop resisting it.
Everything is changing with every moment. Which is why everything is precious. And maybe it’s why the universe has me move so much: to remind me of this constant truth. To put me back in my place as soon as I get a little too stagnant, a little too comfortable, and my world a little too small. While it may be natural to attach to the familiar, I work to cultivate acceptance that nothing remains unchanged. This house, this address, this commute, this posse, and this era will all someday shift or fade.
In yoga we can make the mat our “home” and come to it with a sense of wonderment and intrigue rather than comparison for a past class. Yoga asks us to transition through the poses, move dynamically, flow, become static, release, cycle, detox, and let go. We move on the mat to practice moving deliberately and with presence to our lives in this very moment. We practice showing-up on the mat despite the changes around us. We release what was once familiar and reinvent ourself again and again, only to create home once more. {ahhhh….child’s pose} Yoga feels like coming home, because it helps us all be who we really are, right here right now.
Hold space for the feelings that arise with the transitions. A new routine awaits with fresh smells, new friends, inside jokes, another good sushi joint, and perhaps another favorite yoga class.
