When you're a hammer, everything is a nail

If you want to have a reason why you'll never be able to do something, say, practice yoga, or master a particular posture in yoga, or drive a car, or learn a foreign language, or whatever it is you see yourself as being unable to do, then you will always be able to find it, keep it in your pocket and take it out whenever you need to use it. If you want someone to validate your reasoning, you'll always be able to find that person, someone who is always willing to tell you exactly what you need to hear in order to keep you exactly where you are right now.

But isn't it better to take a broader view of yourself? Isn't it better to continually ask yourself, "Am I defining myself too narrowly here?" Isn't it better to stop settling for any one definition of who you are, and instead, to allow your definition of yourself to evolve over time?

From the moment we are born, the ways in which we define ourselves begin piling up thanks to our well-meaning parents (remember, Mom, as you read this, I am a parent too....). We're the "first born" and behave accordingly. We're the "smart one" or the "cute one". We are really good with language, but not so good with numbers. We are really good at art, but maybe not so inclined toward science. We're sports enthusiasts. Or we're bookish.

We take comfort in the ways in which we define ourselves, even when those definitions are not so favorable. "I've never been good at getting places on time," we say to those who are waiting for us, as if our lateness is an immutable truth. "I could never run long distances because I would get bored being in my own head for so long," we say without ever having tried it. We take pride in the ways in which we define ourselves. We're athletic. We're brilliant. We're good with animals.

Of course, anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time knows exactly where I'm going with this.

Suffering.

We're athletic - but we trip running from first to second base. We're brilliant, but we miss the mark on an important term paper in schol. We're healthy, but we get sick. We have a great yoga practice, but we've been having trouble focusing lately. We are talented, but we don't get the part, don't get the job, don't sell the book, the song, the ticket, the idea. And we suffer. We'd suffer anyway, I suppose when things don't go as we had hoped. But when you add to the mix the dissonance between our definitions and our reality, and when you add to that the realization that perhaps our definitions need some tweaking, well, the suffering can be paralyzing.

But I've talked about this approximately eleventy billion times on this blog already, and commented on your blogs about it, and talked to my students in class about it. At least from the perspective of not meeting our expectations, of not measuring up to our definitions of ourselves. What I have not really gotten into thus far is the notion of defining ourselves to the detriment of our growth and expansion.

I have a close friend whom I love dearly. She has always been there for me, even when I haven't been the most deserving of her generosity of spirit. She doesn't judge people harshly. For that matter, she hardly judges people at all. If you tell her something terrible has happened to you, or even that you've done something terrible, she makes you feel like it's going to be okay, not because she feeds you a bunch of cliches about "everything's going to turn out alright" but because she looks at you straight in the eyes and talks to you as if this you're the twelfth person she spoke to on this day who had the same thing happen or who did the same exact thing. If she hasn't heard it all before, you would never know it, because she accepts what you tell her with a vibe of total calm.

The only trouble is that her generosity stops when it comes to herself. My friend has a limited definition of who she is and what she can do. And she does not seem capable of expanding her definitions. I guess she believes she can be more comfortable by adhering to the gospel she has set down for herself in her own mind.

But to paraphrase Pema Chodron, the brilliant American Buddhist nun, if we spend our time trying to stay comfortable, eventually we are going to run headlong into our own discomfort. It is inevitable. A much more "juicy" and "spicy" way to live is to allow ourselves to get to know ourselves better, test our reality, ask ourselves: what is no longer true about me that used to be true? What is true about me now that used to not be true?

For several years now, I have been trying to figure out the perfect gift for my friend, to show my appreciation for everything that she did for me when I was sick in 2002. That's a long time, and it reflects the fact that it is difficult, if not impossible, to give my friend anything because she has a difficult time admitting that she needs anything. But this week, it dawned on me, finally: I would teach my friend to drive a car.

Yes, it's true. She is more than twenty-five years past the age when most of us get our learner's permits. But having grown up in New York City, my friend never learned to drive. It really isn't that unusual, although it certainly isn't the norm, and it certainly isn't advisable once you have children, especially children that leave the city to go to chess tournaments, sporting events, camps, and the like. And so, I offered to teach my friend to drive.

"You and everyone else," she laughed.

Apparently, I wasn't the first, and surely I will not be the last.

"I'm just not a driver," she said emphatically, effectively battening down the hatches.

"How can you say that if you've never tried to drive?" I asked her, "How can you KNOW that about yourself without having tried and failed and tried and failed some more?"

"Look at my mom. She can't drive. I'm like her. We don't drive." Her reasoning was so ingrained that it made perfect sense to her. In her mind, she is simply someone who cannot drive. Can. Not. Drive. It is as much a part of her identity as her name, her hair color, her eye color.

But the thing is - even one's name and hair color can change. Even one's eye color can change too as one ages. There is nothing about us that is ultimately and fully resistent to change. Unless our mind tells us so. Even then, we might have a hard time navigating the distance between what our mind tells us and what is actually true or what later becomes true. But sometimes, as in this case, our mind can have an incredible power over the limitations we impose upon ourselves. Perhaps more power than it can ever have over our most optimistic expectations.

I tried to explain to my friend that by defining herself as a non-driver, she was virtually assuring that she would always be a non-driver. I asked her if she might, at some later point, not while we were on the phone, consider the possibility that she could become someone who could drive? You know, allow for the possibility of changing her definition of herself?

So far, that has not come to pass. But as I read the EZ Board and see that someone has been told that perhaps their arms are too short to bind in Mari C, and as I think back to a yoga teacher that I once had who told me that my arms are too short to practice lolasana or jump my feet through my legs, I feel compelled to remind myself and anyone who cares to read this blog, that mindfulness is not just about keeping our expectations of, and demands upon, ourselves in line with where we are right now. Mindfulness is also about opening up to the possibility that what the limitations which we believe to be the walls that surround us may be nothing more than a mirage, that we might actually be able to walk right through them. If we give ourselves permission to try.

YC