Sensible Thoughts

We all know competitive people. They’re frankly annoying. Whatever you do, they will try to one-up you. They will interrupt you, or block you as a way to get ahead. They can often be found grandstanding in front of a crowd, laughing at themselves in a self-deprecating way so as to appear charming.

They certainly don’t care about you – unless they think they can ride on your coattails. In that case, they will shower you with compliments, sticking as close to you as possible to catch any benefits that may trickle down. But they’ll throw you under the bus as soon as your talents are no longer needed, and without a hint of remorse. Because in the end, they really only care about winning.

Those are the really competitive people. But then, we all compete to a certain extent, don’t we? We are all trying to appear better than we are. We are all trying to impress.

I recall being in yoga classes and trying to do all the poses perfectly. I swear, the bend in my front leg in Warrior II pose was completely horizontal! My lunges were deep. My Triangle pose was a model of symmetry. In short, I was using yoga (of all things) as a way to compete. I was trying to impress. What I failed to notice was that no one really cared, except for me.

The real question is: why did I feel the need to do this? Looking back, it was because I felt inadequate in so many ways. Suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I felt weak and sick and useless most of the time. But if I could do a perfect Extended Side-Angle pose, it meant I still had some value. In the yoga studio, I was faultless – or, at least, I tried to be.

I’m reflecting on this now because of a discussion I had with a customer this week. When I mentioned the yoga classes I teach, she immediately felt the need to tell me that she did yoga for years and can still do a perfect Headstand, as well as a Handstand. She wanted me to know she was no slouch, and didn’t need any help.

In that moment, I saw myself. And I felt so much compassion for her. I can still remember that old ‘me’. The ‘me’ that used to try so hard to be perfect. The ‘me’ that tried a restorative yoga class just once and declared it pointless. As far as I could tell, everyone was just lying around. Where was the benefit in that?

At the time, my idea of exercise was that you needed to strain and sweat. If you weren’t pushing yourself in some way, you weren’t getting any stronger. You weren’t getting any better. And I was in the habit of pushing myself – hard – in all areas of my life. If I wasn’t putting in 110% effort, I thought I was slacking. When I look back, it’s no wonder I got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In fact, it’s a wonder I didn’t get it sooner!

Which brings me to my point. In Western culture, we are taught that we don’t have value unless we have achieved something important. Unless we have produced something of value. We work all day in offices, in workplaces, and even in our own homes, trying to prove to ourselves and to others that we have worth. That we matter. That we are deserving of love.

I’m here to tell you that you are already deserving of love. You already matter. You don’t have to do anything. The people who truly love you already love you, without condition. You don’t need to prove yourself to them. That was a lesson it took me a long time to learn. Ironically, it’s a lesson you start to learn when you do restorative yoga – precisely the type of yoga class I regularly steered myself away from.

In restorative yoga, you learn that there are supports beneath you that you can rely on. You don’t need to do it all yourself. You can rest. You learn that you have value even when you are still. Even when you are doing nothing.

It’s a very important lesson for all people who suffer from fatigue, burnout, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which I see as an extreme version burnout. Really, it’s an important lesson for everyone who lives in our culture.

If you can see yourself in anything I’ve said here, know that you don’t have to try so hard. Know that you are valued just as you are. Understand that anything you do or create will be of better qualify if it comes from a place of peace, rather than desperation.

And then come visit me at www.rebeccasrestfulyoga.com. Together, we’ll restore your nervous system and help you remember what you were like before competitiveness got hold of you. Before you felt you needed to prove yourself in order to be loved.

Last night, my husband and my eldest son went to Centennial Park to ride the go-carts one last time.

These go-carts, once a cherished part of my children’s memories, will soon be no more. The City of Toronto has plans to demolish this part of the park. No doubt, something new will be installed there, and perhaps it will be something we enjoy even more than the go-carts, but right now, it just feels very sad. It’s the end of an era. Like so many things in my life of late, the go-carts will soon be part of my past.

There was a large crowd of people there, my husband said. Everyone wanted to ride the go-carts one last time before they shut them down. While they were there, my son shared his first memories of the place, riding in the passenger seat with his too-large helmet on, my husband at the wheel, driving for the both of them. I was surprised and pleased that he remembered this. My husband was too. And joy was mixed up with the sadness.

I suppose that’s the way life always is. We never experience just one emotion at a time, but a mix of all of them at once. It part of what makes life so heartbreakingly beautiful – that we can see the beauty mixed in with the sadness, and the laughter mixed in with the pain.

The most important thing, as I’ve been realizing of late, is to recognize and feel all of it. The whole mixed bag. In the past, I think I’ve tried to protect myself from all the harder emotions – the sadness and the hurt and the anger and the jealousy. I’ve pushed them all away, thinking it would keep me more optimistic, that it would prevent me from falling into a depression. It never really worked.

Ironically, what seems to help is not running away, but actually leaning in to all those difficult emotions. And so, I’ve allowed myself to feel every nuance of the shock and bewilderment of my father-in-law’s recent, sudden death. I’ve been feeling into all the love and care that my mother showed me before she died, that in fact, she showed me throughout her entire life. Feelings that I’ve tried to hold at a distance from myself, to protect myself from hurt, I’m finally, unapologetically, allowing inside.

My life has recently encompassed a lot of endings. The go-carts in Centennial Park are just a small reminder of that. But when I reflect on things, it has been filled with a lot of tender, life-giving moments as well. Like when my husband told me how proud he was of my courage, or my brother-in-law showed empathy for my tears, or my kids helped out with chores without being asked.

Just before my father-in-law died, my youngest son visited him in the hospital. My son was trying to be cheerful, expressing optimism about my father-in-law’s condition, telling him that things could still get better. But my father-in-law would have none of it. I think he already knew the score. Instead of humouring my son, he said, bluntly, “Try not to be sad about my death. It’s OK. Just go and live your life!”

And so, that is what we shall do. Without avoiding the sadness of the ending, we will grasp hold of the memories that lift us and sustain us, and we shall move on towards a new beginning. The beginning of Rebecca’s Restful Yoga. The possibility of new adventures and new challenges. And perhaps, just perhaps, those go-carts at Centennial Park will be replaced with something even more beautiful and meaningful than what was there before. A place where even more memories can be made, both happy and sad.

“To greet a lovely morning, we must leave the night behind.” ~Tarang Sinha

I used to have these nightmares as a child. I would be chased by a monster or a ghost, or a group of ghosts. It seemed there was always something evil lurking in the dark, just waiting to pounce on me.

In these dreams, I would be running through the basement of my parent’s house, or the basement of my grandparent’s house (always basements!), with the monster of the night fast on my heels. Unable to get away, I would awaken suddenly, terrified, my heart pounding.

In one memorable dream, I managed to escape my grandparent’s house into the dark of the night. As I continued my escape, running down the road to some imagined safety, I suddenly saw my grandmother up ahead, walking slowly. Relieved, I ran up to hug her, desperate for some feeling of comfort. But as she turned to face me, I saw that her skin was green. She wore a witch’s hat and snarled at me as she reached out with her bony fingers to grab me.

So many terrors.

Many years ago, when my husband and I were first dating, I remember reading something about animal avatars. This was long before the rise of video games. In this article, the female author was describing her personality and trying to choose an animal that best matched her spirit. In the end, she picked a tiger. I thought that so mysterious and sexy .

Intrigued, asked my husband what kind of animal he thought I might be. I imagined he might see me as something equally strong and beautiful, perhaps another kind of cat. But do you know what he said?

A rabbit. He saw me as a frightened, bunny rabbit. Droopy ears, long whiskers, twitching nose and all.

Even then, even through my disappointment, I could see the fit. I’ve always been a frightened girl. I’ve never been described as fierce or courageous. I’ve always been a coward.

Now that you know that, it is probably predictable that these last number of years have found me cowering under the covers, anxiously awaiting news of the next, fresh catastrophe. In my case, it hasn’t just been the pandemic. There’s also been my mother-in-law’s dementia and the uncertainty of running her business without her. There’s been my mother’s Parkinson’s disease, and her slow and steady decline. As each of my mothers approached the end of their lives, they demanded things of me I never felt fully equipped to give.

I’ve been stumbling. Badly.

But then, as I’m realizing now, I’ve also been growing. Unbelievably, in the midst of all this fear and sorrow, I’ve somehow managed to complete my herbal training, mentor at a herbal clinic for a year, and also take three different yoga teacher trainings. Maybe I wasn’t as frozen in place as I thought.

For me, the night appears to be lifting. The pandemic is over. Both of my mothers have quietly passed on to the next world, with my father-in-law unexpectedly following them. As I blink and look ahead, I am dazed by the light of a new morning. A morning I never dreamed could one day exist. And yet, here it is.

I am opening a yoga studio on Sunday, October 1st. I will be teaching gentle yoga for emotional issues like depression, anxiety and burnout, three conditions I am very much acquainted with. Classes will be both in-person and virtual. If you are interested, my website can be found at www.rebeccasrestfulyoga.com.

Come join me as we walk away from the anxiety and fear of the last few years, and create a new beginning. One with presence, peace, and calm. One where connection is valued over competition, and kindness matters more than hate.

“No matter how far you have run , no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found”. ~ Rene Denfeld

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

My father-in-law loved kitchen gadgets. I suppose he thought they made his life easier. No doubt, they made his food healthier and tastier, and his ingredients more fresh. He owned more than one food processor, two air fryers, four juicers, a vacuum sealer, and more woks and frying pans than could ever fit in his kitchen cupboards – so he stored them in his study.

He also loved movies, but he loved a good deal even more. So, he would borrow movies from the library, copy them onto a compact disc, and then store them in perfectly organized file boxes, which he kept in a series of shelves in his front hall. He had hundreds of these discs. Thousands, even. The shelves were absolutely packed with them, yet I doubt he ever even watched most of them.

He owned shelves and shelves of books, his closet was packed with clothes, and he was starting to build an extensive tool collection. He also filled more than 15 external hard drives with miscellaneous TV recordings. Why did he do this? What was he trying to capture?

You may have noticed that I’m referring to my father-in-law in the past tense. That’s because he died a few weeks ago. Suddenly. Dramatically. None of us were expecting it. His death came completely out of the blue, on a sunny August day, while everyone else was out on vacation enjoying the superb, late-summer weather.

Perhaps we should have known. Or, at least suspected. He’d been struggling with frequent diarrhea, which then progressed to include uncomfortable bloating. In the end, it turned out to be pancreatic cancer. He died less than two weeks after he was diagnosed, before the cancer oncologist could even meet with him to talk about treatment options. The shock of this quick succession of events required time to process. I did nothing but stare at the wall for two days.

I think most everyone has had the experience of cleaning out the home of a recently deceased relative and taken note of all of their things. The things that were so important to them, that they worried over, that they spent outrageous sums of money on. They are all that’s left of my father-in-law now. Our task is to scoop these items up, decide if we want to keep them, and then dump them into boxes and cart them away.

It all feels so disrespectful, and so sad. You become aware, as never before, of how unimportant ‘things’ really are.

My friend Melissa says something often: “Collect memories, not things”. She probably heard it from someone else, but it still resonates with me now. She spends her money and time on experiences: hikes, concerts, parties, friends, and of course, on time with her children and grand-children. She takes pictures. Countless pictures. She captures smiles, funny moments, memorable times.

Looking around me now at all the ‘debris’ my father-in-law has left in his wake, I think she has the right idea. When I die, I don’t want my children to have to clean expensive clothes out of my closet, or weighty, yet meaningless trinkets from my shelves. For the remaining years of my life, I want my heart to sing, not from any power I’ve obtained or from any things that I’ve bought, but from moments of joy and connection with others.

Once we’re gone – and at some unknown hour we will all go – everything we own will turn to dust. It will just be some junk that someone else has to clear away. All of the countless, precious things we have collected will no longer hold any meaning, to us or to others.

So, why not focus on one another instead? Why not observe and listen to the incredibly unique, multi-faceted people sitting all around us, the ones who are themselves ephemeral, flickering lights in the dark. At least these gems will remember some small part of us when were gone. They’ll have a few stories to tell, they’ll warm themselves with laughter, and drink to the memory of our finest hours.

In the end, isn’t that the most meaningful memorial we could hope for? And as a bonus, it doesn’t add to the size of the city garbage dump.

You could say my husband is a “straight talker” – straight talking meaning bluntness, I suppose. But in my opinion, his “straight talk” goes much deeper than that. He doesn’t just state his opinions bluntly, he has this ability to see things that other people don’t.

By this, I don’t mean he is clairvoyant. He can’t see the future. He also can’t see your aura. I guess I would describe his “vision” more as an ability to see through your rationalizations. He can tell when you’re way off base, when your reasoning doesn’t hold up, and when you’re just bull-shitting yourself – or others.

I’ve relied on this particular ability of his many times in my life. In fact, I have valued it most when he sees through my own bullshit. For example, he will bluntly tell me when I am avoiding something out of fear, and not because it doesn’t make sense. He will call out my paranoia, when I think people are saying or doing things behind my back, reminding me that mostly, they’re not thinking about me at all. He has a big problem with lies, and he is contemptuous of manipulators. Somehow, he is able to detect all these things before I even get a whiff of them.

I have often thought he is the quintessential little boy who sees that the emperor has no clothes. Because he doesn’t just notice these things, he also can’t help saying something about them, no matter the social cost. He’s like Toto in the Wizard of Oz, who won’t stop barking and pulling back the curtain until everyone can see that the person they’re afraid of is really just a small, elderly man frantically fiddling with a bunch of levers.

That tiny man – the homunculus – is the supposedly rational mind that, for decades, we’ve been told is directing all of our thoughts and actions. Except that now, we have access to oodles of brain studies showing that this is complete hogwash. Hardly any of our decisions are rationally considered, and we are easily led astray by simple things like the current ratio of hormones in our bodies, consolidated memories from our past, the amount of trees in our environment, and even if we’ve eaten in the past hour.

I learned all this from the book Behave by Robert Sapolsky. It’s a mammoth book, in which he dissects the entire anatomy of human decision-making, from the smallest of neurotransmitters to entire brain regions, from the narrow effect of hormones to how those relate to our larger social environment. Along the way, he cites so many opposing scientific studies that by the time you’re halfway through the book, you’re confused as hell.

What causes us to do what we do? It’s impossible to tell. Every biological marker depends on something else to activate it. So much of what we do is context- dependant. He takes the concept of epigenetics to an entirely new level. In his quest to discover what makes people do what they do, we find no solid answers. You might as well shrug your shoulders and throw a dart, because that’s as close as you’ll ever get to deciphering their reasoning, or lack of it (at least at this time). This should make us all more hesitant when we decide to mete out punishment.

What we do know for sure is that the homunculus has no clothes. Just like my husband, who is constantly pointing out when I get lost in my own head, we as a species are also lost. We need to stop pretending that we’re not. We’ve bungled a lot over the years, from our decision to burn women at the stake for witchcraft, to our long-time defence of slavery.

We make better decisions as a group, when we are confronted, uncomfortably, with many opposing views and perspectives. It helps us to get out of our own heads for awhile and see things from someone else’s point of view. It stimulates openness and creativity. Just like me, we all need someone around to tell us when we’re full of shit. Because it’s rare to the point of impossibility when we can see it for ourselves.

On several different occasions while I was growing up, I remember my mother remarking, “I just love Indian children. They are so well behaved!” At the time, I just shrugged my shoulders. My mother was a teacher at the time, and I was a neurotic adolescent. So, while she had pretty strong opinions about teaching and child-rearing, I mostly had no opinions at all.

I could imagine groups of clean, smiling Indian children, trying their best to be polite. It fit the stereotype. My mother’s remark made a certain sense, even though it rankled a bit. Even then, it seemed wrong to predict someone’s behaviour based entirely on their race.

I also remember when I first met my husband at university. We would often engage in these long, philosophical discussions in my dorm room, and on one particular occasion, I made a comment about all Asians being good at math. Mike bristled, which surprised me at the time. “Not all Asians are good at math,” he told me. “That’s just as ridiculous as saying that all Caucasians are good at math.”

I didn’t quite get it. All the Asian people I knew were good at math (although, admittedly, I didn’t know many). What I didn’t understand at the time is that there could be many different reasons for Asians shining in the classroom.

For one, most Asians who immigrated to North America in the late 50’s and early 60’s (as his parents did), tended to be the best and brightest. They won scholarships to attend university in North America, so it’s natural that their kids might be particularly bright as well. That doesn’t necessarily mean that all Asians everywhere share this same talent, though.

Secondly, and the focus of this particular blog: the kids of many Asian immigrants were often forced to be good at math through repeated beatings and scathing verbal abuse. They were the best and brightest because their parents simply wouldn’t accept anything less.

You might recall a popular book published in 2011 called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. It became a best-seller because it promoted the idea that if you wanted your kids to succeed, you needed to push them hard. Everybody wanted their kids to succeed like Asian kids, so a lot of mothers took Chua’s advice and strived to be Tiger Moms too.

But at what cost? As it turns out, the lives of those Asian immigrant kids was not so great. Now that these kids have reached middle age, they are starting to speak out about their experiences, and this is the subject of Stephanie Foo’s incredible book, What My Bones Know, a memoir of her struggle to overcome complex PTSD as a result of her parents’ excessive discipline when she was growing up.

In the book, Foo describes how her mother would beat her with chopsticks, a tennis racket, a plastic ruler, a wire hanger – anything she could get her hands on – and often for the smallest reasons, like putting her foot up on a chair. Or opening up the plastic wrapping on a copy of People magazine before her mother could read it. Or failing to say she was sorry about any number of things, depending on her mother’s mood of the day. She was regularly told she was useless, ungrateful, and ugly. She was hurled down the stairs by her ponytail, kicked mercilessly, or threatened with a raised cleaver at her wrist, or her neck.

My husband tells similar stories. He was beaten regularly with the rubber Hot Wheels tracks many of us played with as children. When those weren’t immediately at hand, he was also just plain slapped or hit. He was told he was stupid, lazy, and useless. He was also waterboarded: held upside-down with his nose directly under a running tap. On some occasions, his father would strip him naked and then lock him outside the house for an indeterminate amount of time, even during the coldest days of February. When I asked how old he might be when this kind of punishment occurred, he said about 7 or 8.

Those Indian kids who my mother thought remarkably obedient and polite probably acted that way because they’d be beaten savagely if they didn’t. Those Asian kids who got high marks and achieved first place in every mathematics competition likely faced severe punishment if they failed. It shines a different light on all that good behaviour, on all those spectacular successes.

What I like about Stephanie Foo’s book is that, while she doesn’t shy away from showing the abuse, she also strives to understand why her parents did it. She knows the pressure they felt to succeed, having sacrificed so much to get to North America. She knows the traumatic pasts they were often escaping. Her parents had hard lives. They took it out on their kids. It’s incredibly sad, but also incredibly human.

So, what does all this mean? I guess it means that you should never assume someone else has it easier than you unless you’re able to walk a mile in their shoes. I think it also means you should try to appreciate all the good things you have in your own life. You might not get the highest marks in school, or the job promotion at work, but at the very least, you know your parents care about you (at least I hope you do!) Many Asian kids didn’t have that same assurance, and they still suffer because of it.