To Each His Own

I have come to realize over time from meeting many people that very few of us are truly accepting when it comes to our own families. We all have family "issues" of some sort or another. As one of my recent DailyOM e-mails said, "when it comes to our families, we sometimes see only our differences." And it seems to me that often these issues are more pronounced around holiday times.

I think the reason why is because none of us are perfect. We are all human after all. Beyond that, we are all raised by our parents who of course are human and therefore, to a degree, all that imperfection has simply passed down to us from the many generations that came before us. It goes to that whole "you turn out like your parents" syndrome that we have all heard many times before.

What I also have come to realize, now having practiced yoga for a while (and I am not referring to the physical practice alone), is that we don't have to be slaves to this syndrome.

I have found through my practice that I tend to view the world through a lens of my own creation. It is the lens that I have shaped as a result of all the influences in my life since the day I was born. I see the world and other people through this lens. My lens is the baseline by which I measure all experiences and people that I interact with. My reality is created by my personal point of view through this very personal lens. Unfortunately, I think this lens is often out of focus.

I also have found that it's easy to forget that everyone else views their own world through their own lenses. Each of us measures reality against our own interpretation and projection of what reality is to us or more importantly what we want it to be. We measure each other against ourselves and against how we would act or react. More often than not, the actions of others fail to meet the measure by which we view the world and therefore, we get disappointed or upset or whatever.

It's easy for me to forget this and fall prey to this human nature experience. It's easy to let the lens cause me emotional distortion. It's easy to forget to be present.

I am not perfect. I accepted this long ago. It is a part of this life that we all have to face and learn to deal with. However, I have begun to learn through my yoga practice that when I am present and fully aware that I have the ability to refocus my lens in an instant. The imperfection is that I often forget that I have this ability. As I learn to do this more aptly though, I am beginning to realize that life does not have to be a reflection of all the "issues" or the emotional distortion that typically my lens would be magnifying. Instead it can be about my favorite metaphor - relaxing in the pose. Everytime I relax in the pose, I find that my reactions are a non-event or that the reaction I have is simple acceptance.