Oh, I'm Sorry, I Forgot

Theme song: Shake it out

This post is about identity and chaos.

I am speed writing it because my iMac video card is going and I have only random windows of opportunity to write before the screen goes blank and I'll have to force quit my computer (Force quit. Nice, contemporary phrase. Good idea for a blog post.).

Don't worry about me! I made an appointment at the Mac store to get this pesky video card thing-thang taken care of.

Anyhoo, this post is about identity and chaos and dying video cards fit in nicely with the theme, yes?

Monday rolls around I forget to teach a 15 minute yoga lesson to my younger son's 5th grade class. Probably, his disapproval and 10 year-old shame will be punishment enough, but the truth is I let down the teacher (who expressed her frustration to me, yes), 25 children, and the two other mother/yoga teachers who were organizing the lessons. I can even imagine my older son hearing about it, and boy does he have a 13 year-old gift for scathing wrath.

It's kind of genuinely good to know that I am already paying the price for my sin.

There were some minor reasons for this memory failure, including that I didn't put the event into my calendar (never good), it's outside my normal routine, and we are launching a new school year, which is always disorienting. Life is full of disorienting change. Did you know that?

These reasons, while they contributed, are not the reason. The reason is ambivalence caused by a changing identity. That's right.

In case you didn't know, in addition to being full of disorienting change, life is about process. I drafted a novel, once, about the point of change. The moment things go from being one way to being another. That's called transformation. But when, really, does it happen? What is the instant? The moment of contact? These questions interest me, and the answers will be revealed in yet another blog post -- so stay tuned.

Let's discuss identity. I believe I already told you that after my marriage ended I went around identity free for a period of time that lasted up until quite recently. Last week? The week before? I can't really remember.

In any case, at first it was notable and strange not having an identity. It kept being that way (notable and strange), but less significant. Maybe even kind of funny. And then, really without me controlling it, I woke up one day to the fact that I have a new identity. And that is called a disorienting change, this one made more so by the fact that I consciously set out to reinvent myself.

Who knew you could set out to reinvent yourself and actually do it? The results, of course, are never exactly what you intended (the subject of yet another blog post -- this is getting kinda crazybeautiful, yes?)

Circling back around to The Case of the Forgetful Yoga Teacher, when I was invited to teach the class, a huge part of me did not want to do it. And that huge part was like the elephant in the middle of my soul, or maybe my spirit.

Friends, I am no longer a yoga teacher. Am I? Maybe you can take the girl out of yoga, but you can't take yoga out of the girl.

The very sweet yoga teacher/mothers (friends of mine, actually) who organized this event thought of me and included me. They think I'm a yoga teacher! I still practice yoga, think about yoga, read the sutras, take classes, and frame my world view at least partially through yoga's lens, so I guess that's true-ish.

I've nevertheless changed since the days when I taught a few yoga classes a week, practically for free. I've even changed since the days when I tried to make my yoga a business. And I've changed since the days when it was easy for me to arrange my life around a 15 minute yoga class. The ambivalence is, of course, that I want to participate in my son's education and make a contribution to the class and I know yoga is a priceless gift. Teaching yoga to fifth graders, the opportunity to plant that seed, is an honor and a privilege.

The ghost -- or spirit -- of my former identity lives on, showing interesting ways in which identity is layered, and evolving. It's as if there is a photograph of each of us, or maybe it's simply a black outline on a white screen, and images are layered over it. The images flicker and play, changing in prominence over time, adding and subtracting, but that residue of who you were is always there (this is called karma), and your actions, of course, plant the seed for your futurepresent. These changing images/pieces of identity are chaotic in practice, if not by nature.

In what passes for reality, I have so much business to mind, it's hard to know how to mind it all -- including a desire to write. I agreed to do the class, and then I planned to get up early that same Monday morning and write some of my book. (One pesky thing I've noticed is that books don't get written unless you park your b-u-t-t in a chair and write. Books don't get written while you're teaching fifth graders yoga.)

I am NOT saying I did the right thing. Of course not. I let a lot of people down, including myself. It is hard to say "no" to things you love and value, and I didn't have the will to do it. So I forgot. I genuinely did, making it the best kind of lie possible.

Now what's left is to forgive myself. How?

Forgiveness is, I guess, a bit like identity. It is shifting and chaotic, a process you can't quite control, a destination that arrives to you in its own time and way.

I felt, and feel, bad about this. Yet what, really, is the point of feeling bad besides keeping you out of the sociopath category?

I apologized. It didn't feel like enough.

I'm thinking now I could have said, not just "I'm sorry and I understand why this was a problem," but "Is there anything I can do to make this up to you?"

Actually, you know, I'm still on the same fence: There are two more sessions scheduled with yours truly. I could cancel them. I could say, "After I forgot to teach for you on Monday, I realized I can't make this a priority right now. Let's find someone who can."

Or, I could really make these next two 15 minute sessions really count.

I can gather the strength of the part of me who is still a yoga teacher, concentrate that flickering light, and teach with all my spirit the priceless gift of yoga to all those bright and shiny fifth graders. And I can further commit to adding in the "lost" time elsewhere in my writing schedule.

I can hold, firm and faithful, to the notion that there is a time and place for everything I hold dear.

Your Turn

What do you hold onto, firm and faithful?