Poetry: The Importance of Being True to Self

Yesterday I remembered this poem that I'd written a few years ago. It dawned on me that it is along the same lines of what is – or should – get hammered home in yoga: it's most important to do your own yoga. Listen to your body, see what works best for you, make adjustments as necessary, don't do someone else's yoga.

Life as the Desert

Many a person has said to another:

“I miss you like the desert misses rain.”

or some form of this,

but what if we have it wrong?

What if it doesn’t miss rain at all?

Maybe it already tried being Caribbean beaches

or the Andes Mountains

or the snowfields of Greenland

and it just felt too strange –

somehow so wrong.

So it chooses to be arid

and to harbor cacti and lizards

and pebbles and rocks

and oases and the occasional mirage

and rainfall is simply its common cold

as it finds its bliss in being The Desert

instead of living a lie.