Nobody Knows What They Are Doing

Just some degenerate millennials who happen
to be some of the smartest cats I've ever known. 

I've come to recognize that despite the extreme misfortune of entering a job market during the worst economic climate ever, the predicament of our lost generation, as well documented by the New York Times and Lena Dunham, has resulted in one of the most resourceful, creative and efficient generations. We were initiated into an understaffed, underfunded and highly competitive environment and we had no choice but to learn shit quick.

Unlike our boomer colleagues, you would never hear one of us utter something like, "that's not my job" or "I don't know how to do that." Instead we'd pull up a tutorial on YouTube and teach ourselves. Half a decade into my career and I'm finally realizing the value of this skill. I can blow a CEO's mind with a line of code, and all I really did was Google it. The most successful people I know continue to be self-taught self-starters who seize each and every opportunity they see in order to acquire new skills that keep them climbing the ladder.

Before I finished college I felt like such a lost degenerate dummy, terrified of what people referred to as the "professional world." I was so apprehensive that I actually just moved to Europe and decided to just keep going to school. Merely uttering the word "resume" made me break out in hives, so I needed some time to gain some confidence.

After a few years of hustling, freelancing, and bopping around job to job, followed by a few somewhat respectable positions, I was overwhelmed with a sense of complete and utter shock at the fact that NO ONE, not a one person, knew exactly what they were doing. Even the really really really smart Ivy leaguers were more often than not taking shots in the dark. I worked under people who managed projects I could have done with my eyes closed and watched as they boggled the whole thing, biting my tongue and wondering how society had not yet collapsed under such mismanagement.

The NYT article, which adds to a growing pile or hopeless opinions about our future adds this nail to our collective coffin: "For the first time in modern memory, a whole generation might not prove wealthier than the one that preceded it." If wealth equals money, then I'd probably have to agree with that statement. But if wealth refers instead to skills, innovation, creativity, resourcefulness, adaptability and a wide range of experience, I'd have to argue that we may just turn out to be the richest generation of all.

I don't know how to let people treat me.

Ahimsa, the sanskrit term meaning non-violence, or doing no harm. Simply put, ahimsa is kindness -- being kind to yourself and everything around you. This is the first yama, which is one of eight of the limbs of yoga. Ahimsa is harder than it seems, most of all, practicing it toward ourselves. We are our own harshest critics, and we tend to let others treat us just as poorly as we treat ourselves.

My problem is that I am hard on myself and strive for an unrealistic perfection. When I am not perfect, I get down on myself, and now I don't know how I am supposed to be treated as a human. I can easily tell other people when they are not being treated with the utmost respect they deserve, but for some reason when I'm the one being jerked around, I find all these excuses for the abuser and look it as some challenge that I should learn to view empathetically.

Admittedly, this is the only way to stay positive, or even sane in certain situations. Sometimes a coworker, a roommate, or someone even closer to you treats you like garbage, and you excuse their behavior because, frankly there is no alternative. You have to live with said person, and you ought to find a way to keep yourself from becoming completely unhinged.

My problem is that I don't know where the line is. Sometimes I get so used to letting someone at work treat me like dirt, and then I somehow let that bleed over into my friendships, relationships, and wellbeing.

It is a practice, but a very difficult one.

Sacred Heart

Chakras

The chakras are seven energy centers located deep within the physical body, in what many refer to as the subtle body-- that part of ourself that we can't see or touch, but we know is there.

Each chakra governs different aspects of our lives, our health, our relationship to ourselves, and to the world around us. By cultivating a deeper knowledge and understanding of the chakras, we can begin to connect mind, body, and spirit through listening to what may start out as a whisper, and if we ignore the voice long enough, eventually turn into a scream.

Although each chakra can be studied and understood on an intellectual level separately, they work together as a system. To isolate one chakra and ignore the others is like treating only one symptom while ignoring an entire illness.

The lower three chakras deal more with our relationship to the physical, material world, and as we move up through the system, the ideas and aspects that they rule become more abstract, eventually transcending the material world completely.

Most of us live that majority of our lives focused on the lower chakras -- assuring our basic survival, learning to live with and accept the self, and eventually connect with others. Given the very visual and headstrong characteristics of modern society, many of us also have a very strongly stimulated Ajna chakra, located at the third eye, our center of visualization, intellect, intuition, and turning ideas into action.

This relationship between the lower chakras and Ajna can create a sort of energetic loop. Many of us focus intensively on our basic human needs (first chakra); sex, creation and procreation (second chakra); the self, the ego, and our place in society (third chakra), and Ajna, aforementioned the sixth chakra. The problem of this loop can be in neglecting the fourth and fifth chakras, the heart center, and the throat.

The heart is the seat of what I will refer to as the "soul" and its functioning deals mostly with trust, integration, wisdom, oneness, hope, and unconditional love. Just above the heart center is the throat, which deals much with speech, communication, expression, and confession.

The issue that arises when this loop between lower and visual chakra occurs is that the heart and throat are neglected. Our lives become consumed with thinking of the lower needs, and playing them on the movie screen of our minds over and over again, reinforcing the loop, and silencing the truth in our heart and the voice of our soul.

In order to cultivate more balance and authenticity in our lives, we need to occasionally turn off the screen in our minds, so that we may listen to our hearts, our souls, and in turn begin to vocalize, not just to others, but to ourselves as well, what out true purpose is in this world.

My Friend is Leaving

So I made her a playlist.

Synthesizing Anger

I laugh at myself for taking my life too seriously. I laugh at others who take themselves too seriously. Osho says, "Life should be not a serious thing, it should be a deep playfulness, a fun."

And life should be fun. But I am a scorpio and a pitta, and I want to be the best, most efficient, most productive, most giving, most humanitarian, world-saving most superlative person ever.

I recently started a new job, which I adore, and I want to succeed in this job. I've never worked at a place where I cared so much, felt so stimulated, so inspired, so passionate about the work I'm doing and the cause working for. I've also been teaching a rigorous schedule lately (I know, I promise Mom, I'm going to teach less and take care of myself), I am also taking two online courses (for fun?), volunteering at a yoga studio, trying to have my own meditation and yoga practice... The list is endless of the things I wish and hope to achieve or accomplish (ugh I sound so annoying when I talk like that).

Additionally, my sister had her second baby today, so let's say I'm a little tired and a lot overstimulated, so maybe the following episode was a bit brought on by stress and fatigue.

So today I finally got so aggravated with someone that everything became too much, and I boiled over. I felt a sudden, intense disgust and revulsion toward this person. This isn't the first time I've gotten agitated recently, in fact I've been on edge for a while now. But this time I did something different.

I sat, and I watched my anger. I assessed it. I felt it burn me. I watched my anger boil over and I felt it beat red in my veins. I felt my heart pound, I thought about it hard and I sat with my anger. And when it passed, it felt like that moment when a huge spring thunderstorm passes and the sun starts to soak up the rain from the ground, the heavy air and the clouds lift, the air is cooler and crisp, and the birds begin to emerge.

And then my anger was gone. Now the anger has passed and I can continue to enjoy life and move forward in a positive direction, while I continue cultivating playfulness in my life and begin to take thing with less intense seriousness.

Breathe through it

Have you ever tried to breathe through a straw? Next time you have one in your drink, give it a try. You'll try to suck in air as hard as you can, but you can't seem to get enough oxygen. Take a few breaths like this, and see how you feel. Your chest and throat muscles will begin to tighten, and soon enough your entire body will begin to tense and feel the threat of not taking in enough breath.

Breath is life. In yoga breath is also called "prana" or life force energy. Without breath, there is no life. Breath moves oxygen and energy through the body, and when it is constricted, the entire body feels this lack.

I know all about this tightness of breath, because it is one of the awesome symptoms of anxiety. Feeling anxious means feeling like someone is standing on your chest, and no amount of sighing or belly breathing can release that pressure. A few days of breathing like this and the entire body starts to feel it.

I was about eleven years old the first time I experienced this breathing frustration. For an active kid with no asthma in my family, feeling like I couldn't breathe deeply enough was scary. Little did I know I would spend another decade before I understood it was chemicals in my brain causing me to struggle for air.

I am once again caught in a bout of anxiety. This time, I'm a yoga teacher. This time I know the tools. I know the breathing routine, I know the chakras to open, I know the poses, but nothing is working. Not a single thing. And part of me has to accept that no amount of knowledge will liberate me from something as powerful as a malady of the brain.

Talking through it with friends, everyone offers the same advice: get to the root of the problem.

Ah, why yes! How simple?! Right?

No.

Look, sometimes it's just not that simple. It's not always about uncovering some latent issue. Sometimes anxiety or depression do stem from a specific issue one is not ready or willing to confront, but other times it's just because you were born that way. Some of us got screwed in the genetic lottery. If a friend had asthma, would you recommend they find the root of the problem and get past it? I understand that there is a lack of understanding or awareness of how the brain functions and how inherited brain chemistry can be a factor one's suffering, but it is time that both I and others stop assuming it is all in my head. Some things in life just can't be rationalized that easily.

Holidaze.

my break turned me all kinds of upside down. how was yours?

Holiday break! Always a roller coaster of emotions as I take that lovely nostalgic trip down memory lane. Drudging up all the crap from the past that I thought I had left in my wake, those events that shaped and also hardened me, make their way back to haunt me, taking multiple forms for a less-than-stellar mindfuck. 

My holiday break felt slightly off with both of my sisters absent and tending to their new families. My singledom thus became the forefront of nearly every conversation. As a single 28-year-old female, especially in the south, I had to answer a lot of questions regarding my wanderlust lifestyle. 

Holding my friend's newborn, I was forced to confront the question of whether or not I made the right decision in following my passions and remaining a self-reliant and adventurous woman, or if I would be happier settling down, or just settling. 

To add a layer of confusion to my augmenting anxiety, my emotional blasts-from-the-past seemed to be centered on the theme of my cheating ex-boyfriend who ripped my heart out in my mid-twenties. Being older and wiser, I like to think I have let go of the pain and anguish I suffered for nearly 5 years as I was held captive by my love for a guy who would never love me the way I deserved, and never love only me.  

Even at a New Year's Eve party, a random friend-of-a-friend I met looked at me with the kind of recognition that a girl only gives when she knows she's done something behind your back with your man. As we reviewed how she seemed to know me and I not her, it became clear to me that she had probably been among the many "other women." And once again the emotions of being duped by someone I loved came rushing back. I felt my breath shorten, as if someone were standing on my chest. 

. . . 

I'm a scorpio. By nature, when I love, I love hard. I am the kind of person who you want on your side, not only for my unwavering loyalty, but also because the vengeful nature of scorpios means you do not want us as an enemy. 

With hard loving comes a very selective entourage, and most of my friends remain friends for life. For the same reason I hate small talk and parties, I love an intense friendship where I can sense your needs before you even know what you need. 

But I can't love again yet, and it makes me sick. I want nothing more than to do away with the hurt that a stupid boy caused me. I want nothing more than to NEVER think about that hurt ever again, and more importantly, to never blog about a boy hurting me. That's just gross and so not my style. But here we are.