Live Life Wide

It has been a rough couple of months. I recently lost my father (and I was the ultimate daddy's girl) and I have another very dear friend who is fighting cancer. Needless to say, I've been thinking about death a lot.

I keep trying to write this blog about death in my typical funny irreverent way.....it's just not coming. You see death sucks. (Well I guess I can't really say for the deceased, since I've clearly never died, but for the survivors -- it sucks.) Death leaves a gaping hole in people's lives. I miss my dad. And I don't want to lose my friend. But death is inevitable. So I guess what we control is the way we march towards it.

Obviously, I've explored a lot of different religious thoughts on death. Heaven, reincarnation, nothingness....again, I can't present facts here. I do have my own personal beliefs, but that isn't really the point of this blog. I can't take the suckiness of death away. So, instead I want to focus on how we live life as we move toward the inevitable.

Today I stumbled across a quote from Dianne Ackerman, "I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

WOW. Sure, given the option, I'd love to have a nice long life. But more importantly I want a life that is too full to fill a room. Not full of things, but of people, places, and experiences.

I try to focus on this desire when I go to my yoga mat. I use my yoga practice not to make my body smaller, but to make my life wider. I don't worry about nailing the perfect warrior or flying in crow. Instead, when I hit the mat, I attempt to look deep and explore the fears that hold me back. I allow myself to feel my emotions -- even those that hurt. I meditate on what would truly make my life WIDE. And hopefully, I find the courage to travel the path to the full life that I deserve.

It's not always easy, but my yoga is at its best when I live my life wide -- not just on my mat.

My wish for each of you is that your life is WIDE with stories of flooded campers, farts that smell so bad you have to bail out of the car, golf holes played with only the driver, and strip poker with your friends. Yeah, I know these stories mean nothing to you, but trust me the memories make for a full and wide life. Memories that will continue to make me smile and my heart fill wide even after people I share them with are gone.

Wishing you all peace, love and a big wide full life,
Cathy