Privileged Cheer

 

Several years ago, I went to a weekend yoga retreat. I even consented to sharing a room with two other women which was completely out of my comfort zone. As was the yoga retreat, since I tend to view these things with some skepticism. Too much enforced positivity and bendy-twisty contortions and no wine!

On the first night we were invited to sit on our mats and write down our intention for the weekend.

Thinking my scribble would be for my eyes only, I wrote: ‘Let go of the fear of my radiation and what may still be in my body.’  I had completed a series of radiation sessions a couple of months earlier.

We were then asked to fold our slips and place them in the centre of the circle. What? They were going to be read? My defences sprung on high alert. Shouldn’t they have mentioned this earlier? Never trust yogis and gurus! Those were the thoughts racing through my mind.

 I felt deceived. If I’d known, I might have written something like: ‘Learn to relax and meditate daily.’  Something vague and appropriate for a yoga retreat. Not something so specific about my body. It was an intimate yet sombre revelation that I had no desire to broadcast (albeit anonymously) to a group of strangers at the start of the weekend.

When I was called to the centre, I picked up a piece of paper from the pile and read, “What is my path?” The words on the paper were - yes, vague and watery and just the reason why one goes to a yoga retreat.

The twenty-something woman who picked up my slip of paper could not read the scrawl of my arthritic hands. ”Let go… of …the fear of …what? I can’t read this. Rad….something? Rad…radi…?” she struggled. Giggling, she then gave up. I was affronted by her tittering, but also relieved that the heaviness of my words had not landed with the group.

The rest of the intentions were along the lines of:  “Make more time for myself”; “Learn to accept myself more”; “Learn to say no more often.”  I wanted to feel empathetic towards the women, but all I could think was: blah…blah…blah…Self-improvement 101 stuff. (Perhaps I needed the retreat more than I thought I did?)

I recently read this book “What If This Were Enough?” by Heather Havrilesky. And now I want to read everything she has ever written. She is sharp, funny, and insightful.  The collection of essays prods and pokes at the messages we are bombarded with in our culture: the constant drive to self-improvement, the shiny lure of a finish line, a state of well-deserved happiness, the ‘psychobabble of gurus and the motivational rhythms’, the blame placed squarely on you for where you are in your life and if you just believe in your passions and pursue them relentlessly, you can achieve nirvana.

In the chapter, “A Scourge of Gurus”, she writes, “Because even as the guru seduces you with his wicked poetry of self-actualization, each lesson is filthy with reminders of your relative shortcomings. There is always the faintest hint that you haven’t arrived yet, that you can and should do better, and that if you fail, you deserve your fate.” If only I could write like that!

That chapter, and the book in general, reminded me of that yoga retreat several years ago. And then it inspired this poem:

Privileged Cheer

Reach for the stars, the moon, the gurus preach

Be your very best self, and nothing less

Who are they, what gives them license to teach —

It’s all Within. It’s you who caused your mess.

Platitudes served up as wisdom is not

What the struggling mother needs to hear

Or the woman with fev’rish child in cot

Sweet, empty words of privileged cheer.

What if the stars are not for us to hold

In mortal hands, sullied with stolen land.

Stars shine light, guide the stories to be told

They do not dim to grant one’s vain demand.

                What if the small joys, peaks, valleys so rough

                What if all that, all this, is really enough.

                                                                Pearl Richard