Yes, there are lots of things in 2020 we might all be missing.
For example…
I grew up in a small Connecticut town where since 1927 there’s been a 4.7 mile road race each Thanksgiving.
The first race had only 12 participants.
In the last decade, there have been more than 15,000 runners, including thousands of unregistered ones.
(And then there’s my mother who just walks as much of it as she feels like and then heads home.)
I’ve no doubt that although the race is largely virtual this year––only 500 runners are allowed in 25-foot spacings––that it will return again soon.
And yet there are things I can’t get back, things lost to the ocean floor of 2020.
One of them, rather ironically, is the branding of “2020” itself.
Over the last few years, I’ve been strategizing and partnering with SEVA, a charity I really believe in.
I’ve written about SEVAin my courses and books for many reasons and it’s prominent on my website.
I find it enormously compelling that for a relatively small donation (only $50), you can do something truly enormous: restore someone’s eyesight.
YES –– A $50 donation will allow someone to see again…And that’s incredible.
In a time where everything seems IMPOSSIBLE, for such a small sum you can create a MIRACLE for someone.
In 2019, I created some pilot programs where I taught benefit workshops for SEVA at Exhale.
I wanted to tie in Vision, both external and inward, into a physical practice.
We had some (delightfully branded) blindfolds created.
We did poses with them.
We walked around the edges of the mat.
And, of course, there was a touch of introspection and even some witchcraft.
(Feel free to ask for more info about that.)
In the innocent days of 2018, we were strategizing that 2020––with that obvious, yet still sweet, punny reference to 20/20 Vision––would be the year we would have these live events globally.
I was even hoping to teach one in Times Square on the Jumbotron, as I had once taught a decade earlier––but this time with blindfolds.
And then 2020 actually happened and…well…you know the rest.
As we begin this holiday season, I’m grateful for so much, but…
I will miss not having 20/20 events in 2020.
And at the same time, I’m reminded of something else that happened in that same room I taught the SEVA Vision benefit workshop.
A year earlier Exhale was being renovated.
Like all renovations, it seemed to take 50 times longer than promised to complete.
And when things reopened, I was more than startled to find that one “finishing touch” had not been done:
The classrooms had no doors!
This can be quite a problem when you’re guiding people into silent serenity and the teacher 20 feet away is revving them up into a HIIT frenzy.
One day, though, I decided that “enough was enough.”
I took matters into my own hands.
As I was instructing students in poses, fifteen minutes into class, I turned into a simultaneously mad carpenter.
I took the stacks of bolsters used for the restorative classes and began wedging them in the doorway.
I created a door out of cushions, one that completely solved the sound overlap problem.
In fact, in all the years I’d been teaching, it was by far the quietest that room had ever been.
My (very few) administrative critics pointed out that I might have been blocking easy egress.
I would counter that they are only bolsters, not bricks, I was using.
If there were a fire alarm,
(or a flash sale at Barneys),
Or any other “emergency,”
Almost anyone could have forced their way through a bunch of glorified pillows.
So….I will miss the Road Race this year.
I will miss not teaching the 2020 | 20/20 workshops I’d created.
And I will definitely miss that Exhale location which is now permanently closed.
Yet I remain hopeful…
(and grateful)…
that we can keep reinventing.
That we can keep finding solutions.
And that better days are ahead.
To paraphrase a saying (I think I first heard in The Sound of Music):
Sometimes when God
removes a door,
it’s up to us to create a new one…
and sometimes maybe with bolsters.
Happy Thanksgiving…
Happy Reinventing…
& Namaste for Now,
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