Holiday

Typically I'm not too big on holidays, after all holiday is a run-on for holy day and isn't every day holy? Or shouldn't it be? I try to think so anyway, although I don't always act holy...

This year was no different, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. No particular reason why this season, just following an old pattern I think. So when I asked my mom what was going on and we talked for a while, for some reason I agreed to spend the night at her house on Christmas eve, something I never do, but I did this year and I ended up enjoying myself.

This yoga stuff has just proven itself to me even more by helping me grow into someone who can be okay and even happy with anything that life can dredge up. I'm not sure when but I had become someone who didn't like the holidays and this year made me know that not to be my truth any longer.

I went to Illinois to my grandmas early in the day of Christmas eve, then went to moms and we left and went to see a movie, Saving Mr. Banks (very good film btw), then dinner, then home showered and slept. On Christmas morning, after sleeping 9.5 hours mind you, something I never do, off to my sisters which was a very good time as well.

I left there and decided to go see the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, another film, on the way home and dinner too before getting home. The movie dredged up my fears of going to India but also showed me that they are unfounded and without the excitement that fear also offers life wouldn't be worth living. I left the theatre feeling quite amazing and ready to take on the world.

I also left knowing the life of privilege that I lead. Meaning that I have lived quite a life. In the late 80's I left home, started a job in the big city (St. Louis believe it or not lol), started exploring the fact that I was a gay man and going out to gay bars at 18, I then also became a drag queen for about a year, what a crazy bit of time that was (partly because every time I did drag I was also on acid!). I didn't do much but sleep around a lot and drink a whole lot in the early 90's, all the way to the late 90's I think, then I fell in love. A love at first site that no one ever has and we all may only have the privilege to experience once, if that. Then I became a stripper, dancing nude on a bar in socks for tips, just to explore the issues I had with my physical body. Very quickly behind that I discovered yoga, and that's when it all started to change. Now since then I've left a corporate job, studied yoga on Maui, lived in Europe for a month, traveled around the country with my mother, switched yogas completely thrice, coming back to the one I originally fell in love with. Became a Sikh, changed my name legally, built a life for myself around yoga and teaching it, that I love mind you, and began teaching yoga teachers. Now I'm about to embark on a trip to India to study yoga in depth.

I've discovered what I love and what I want in life, and all of that shifts and flows and changes in many unexpected ways all the time, but that's okay. How many people have the privilege of knowing what they want to do with their life and actually set out to do it?!?

See what I mean about privilege?

Now I'm so excited to get up early tomorrow and practice yoga and then go and teach it, I love this! How did I not find appreciation for things before now? Maybe I did, just at a different level than now, but now is where I am and now I'm so happy and in love with all the people in my life and what I do with my life!

I can't wait to be in India and experience the culture and the way they approach everything in life as such a holy experience, I feel like I should be there already. Maybe I am...