Creative Headspace #4

Stories about the power of creative connections and how to make room in your mind for things to unfold.

• One of my favorite yoga teachers, Elyse, also teaches middle school English. She often reads poetry to us and weaves the message she wishes to share that day throughout the class. I think she must be a very good English teacher; she reminds me of all the teachers who inspired me to pay attention to words and ideas.

• Not long ago, Elyse read a poem by Mary Oliver that I had never heard, and in that poem was a line that Elyse said was one of her favorites:

• She spoke about the importance of the word “keep” in this line. It was about a practice, which is a perfect sentiment for yoga. I also liked the word “some.” Not all the room, not a prescribed amount of room — just some.

• But I immediately began to worry – which is not the best headspace for a yoga class. (Some days are like that.) I worried because couldn’t this line be interpreted to mean keeping room in your heart for unimaginably terrible things happening? I have a tendency to catastrophize, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to expand the space in my brain devoted to imagining all the things that could go wrong with my business, my family, my health, the drive home, the coming rain storm, dinner.

• I got home and looked up the poem, which is called Evidence. I found it posted by someone who was reading and reflecting on one Mary Oliver poem a day – or at least she was in 2011. I saw that the line about keeping room in your heart is followed by this line:

  “There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.”

• Ahhh so it was both things, simultaneously. Keep some room in your heart for all the possibilities – for what could be unimaginably horrible, sure, but alongside that, keep room in your heart for what could be unimaginably wonderful.

• I liked the sentiment and the line has stuck with me. I keep turning it over in my mind and going back to look at the poem. I keep thinking about how this is the work of our lives – holding space in our hearts for things that seem like they can’t coexist.

• A week or so after that yoga class, I was visiting my daughter, Emily, in Boston, who is herself an English teacher. She is teaching high school English and I know that she is a very good teacher. She cares so much about words and ideas, and about her students. (Is it unimaginable to think that we could build a world in which our school teachers are the most valued members of society?)

• Emily had identified a special restaurant for lunch because she knows I struggle to eat when traveling – I have a lot of food sensitivities (which lead to migraines), and I have to be vigilant. So we went to this carefully chosen and beautiful little restaurant with a wide open menu that offered so many delicious and safe options – super food grain bowls, sandwiches on housemade gluten-free bread, bean soups, and special winter chai blended with maple syrup – and there on the wall on a chalkboard, someone had written these words: 

• I imagine that they change the chalkboard quote every day in that restaurant. I imagine that, somehow, they knew I was coming. I imagine that the universe needed me to see this line again so that the lesson stuck.

Where this wandering ends:

• I returned home and marveled that the plane did not drop from the sky and the flood waters did not sweep away my house. I went back to yoga and continued to breathe.