Thursday, March 6, 2008

Wind of Change

The title of this post refers to the Scorpions song from 1990. In my memory, this was an exciting time. I was 15; walls were falling, families were being reunited, the cold war was ending. The whole year felt like spring to me. A lot of this feeling came from the fact that my parents, too, were (temporarily) reuniting (though less dramatically than those families long separated by the Berlin Wall) after a (long, long, long overdue) year long separation. My father had cleaned up his act, and everyone seemed hopeful.

Actually... this post wasn't supposed to be about my family stuff, but I felt I had to mention that as background. The theme of this post was supposed to be: what the hell happened? So many good things (well, except Gulf War I) seemed to be happening in the late eighties and early nineties. Then we had the boon years of the Clinton administration, then everything went to hell. How the hell did we drop the ball? And how do we pick it up again? Maybe I'm misremembering the sense of optimism I perceived back then. I was young and unjaded (well, less jaded), and my memory of world history might be coloured by my memory of my own history (cf: above).

I attended a talk on the four noble truths and the eightfold path of Buddhism a few weeks ago. Afterwards, I had a private moment with the speaker, and he gave me the following dharma advice: tell more jokes. Corny ones. In rapid succession. It was damn fine advice, so here's a joke for this post: How many Iyengar teachers does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but she needs a mat, a bolster, a blanket, an eye pillow, a chair, a strap, and two blocks.

It's kind of funny if you've studied yoga with Iyengar teachers.

1 comment:

NoRegrets said...

It is funny. That's my favorite type of yoga.