Australian Yoga Journal - April 2018

98

april 2018

yogajournal.com.au

REFLECTION

YJ

It's like

this

“IT’S LIKE THIS.”

That’s what Will liked to say. Will, the

meditation guy from my husband

Edward’s office. Will, who

had interesting answers to hard

questions and didn’t wear shoes. I met

Will when I used to write in a sunny

corner of Edward’s office—a

wonderland of adjustable desks, nap

pods, and unlimited kombucha. When

Edward’s boss offered me an empty desk

and welcomed me to partake in all the

employee benefits, including

mindfulness sessions with Will, I said,

“Amen, brother.”

Most of the time, I slipped into Will’s

class, lowered myself onto a gray foam

brick, and did a crappy version of

whatever he told us to do (breathe,

notice, release). Sometimes I’d linger

and we’d talk.

One morning, after Will had led us

through a meditation about

relationships and conflict, I said to him,

“When the shit hits the fan, even in

situations where I should have been able

to see trouble coming, I get crazy—like

furious-crazy.” He nodded: “It’s a very

cool feature of the human mind that we

keep hoping our interactions are going

to be different.”

Come again, Sock Man? Repeatedly

expecting things to be better than you

know from experience they will be—

that’s cool?

He skated past my scrutiny. “Oh, I

see,” he said, pinpointing my pathology.

“You have the illusion that you can

change people’s behaviour.”

Yup.

Will smiled his meditation-teacher

smile.

“But I want to grow out of the

shock,” I told him. “My teenagers are

mean and moody. This is not new news.

Husbands are late and busy and

distracted. Whoopie. I missed the

deadline for some field trip, lost my

new glasses. Oh well, oh well, oh well.”

“Oh well,” he said. “I like that.

That’s good.”

“Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, ‘oh

well’ usually comes out of my mouth as

‘Motherf--ker.’”

He laughed, then seeing I was not

kidding, said, “Accepting things as they

are is difficult. A lot of people go to war

with reality.” This brand of acceptance

Will was talking about wasn’t grim

compromise or gritted-teeth tolerance.

He wasn't suggesting that we roll over

but rather that we keep rolling, onward.

I already knew this. Resistance is the

road to bleeding ulcers, I’d joked with

Edward. Only a fool berates the gods

over stretch marks and in-laws,

I’d speechified to my girlfriends

over cocktails.

“Being in our lives as they are is

probably one of the most common

struggles people have,” Will said.

Oh, my god, I’m a cliché, I thought,

wondering if Mr. Don’t Go to War With

Reality got tired of telling us janky

By Kelly Corrigan

mortals the same thing over and

over. Here I thought I was a special

person with Special People Problems,

but I was everybody. And since I

was everybody, a pocket of truism

would suffice.

These days, when everything feels

like it’s falling apart, that phrase

Will used to say bubbles up from

some well of memory: “It’s like this.”

It reminds me of a quiet truth:

Life ends. I’ve known this since the

summer of 1972, when an ambulance

drove away in silence with the old

lady who gave out Almond Joys on

Halloween. Recently, I’ve seen

mortality do its awful ghosting up

close—two of my closest friends,

my father—which changed the

context of everything.

Maybe Will’s phrase applies

here, too. Minds don’t rest, they

reel and wander and fixate and

roll back and reconsider because

it’s like this, having a mind.

Hearts don’t idle; they swell

and constrict and break and forgive

and behold because it’s like this,

having a heart. Lives don’t

last, they thrill and confound

and circle and overflow and

disappear because it’s like this,

having a life.

From the book Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan.

Copyright © 2018 by Kelly Corrigan. Published by

Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin

Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved. ILLUSTRATION: ABIGAIL BIEGERT