YOGA FOR KNUCKLEHEADS #18 "OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!"
On a pretty consistent basis, when I enter the yoga studio, and sometimes in the tiny office before I even get into the studio, I am serenaded by perky smiling ladies greeting me or the yoga instructor or anybody in the rooms with “Oh what a beautiful day!” Well, this is all fine with me. It's pleasant that other ladies and the few men entering the studio agree and smile in accordance and pay tribute to another beautiful day on the beautiful central coast and especially so in beautiful Morro Bay, where people drive around with personalized license plates that read--”Morro Bay Beautiful.”
I always feel squeezed to agree with these people, male or female, and resent this, feeling that if I don't echo their enthusiasm for another beautiful day in beautiful Morro Bay I am a kill joy and worse yet some kind of grumpy old bastard, a curmudgeon or misanthrope, or, most deplorable, a person so cynical and negative that I do not belong in yoga class and am observed, as always, as some kind of intruder, an invasive element threatening to ruin the harmony and serendipity in yoga class, where happiness and well being prevails over what exists outside this little world.
A couple of these older babes seem too happy and in tune with a joyous world. I hear them talking before class and their giddy appreciation of life and its beautiful surroundings continues. This behavior sets a trend of others joining in on the joy of being alive in beautiful Morro Bay, further increasing my paranoia as a skeptical outsider who does not wake up every day and greet it with enthusiasm just because the sun is out and there is no wind and it's not to hot or cold, but totally benign, and the view as always is of sparkling splendor...
I feel like telling these people that I wake up every morning hoping it won't be too hot, because I hate heat, and love gloomy overcast windless days that are perfect for tennis, and that I don't mind fog, and that since I live on a bluff two blocks from the beach and have a deck with a view of beautiful Estero Bay in Cayucos and the large rock jutting up in beautiful Morro Bay, that I am spoiled to it and take it for granted unless I am sick or incapacitated from surgery or fearful of oncoming life threatening surgeries.
Otherwise, unless this is all threatened to be taken away from me, as well as my leisurely shuffle through life that suffers no intrusions, please, I am not one to gush about being alive or expressing appreciation and gratefulness at the beauty surrounding me, and do not wish to be coerced into acting so at yoga class. Instead, I prefer to wonder what infiltrates a human being to behave in such an ecstatic manner. Is there some hidden subconscious or psychological motive? Or is it just that yoga as an entity infuses them with a state of well being bordering on utter bliss?
I have trouble looking at such folks and it reminds me of the 1960s when I was a bartender at a hot joint on the pier in Manhattan Beach down south, before the millionaires ruined it, and hippies were everywhere, forcing their joyous discovery of life by insisting that “Life was beautiful and this was the first day of the rest of your life” and all that bullshit. Even when drunk and in a great mood, I refused to give in and agree with these trendy fools and in fact stared at them with a blank expression, so that some of the long-haired dudes and their babes in flowery sundresses with hair under their arms, insisted I SMILE!
At this overture, my reaction was always a withering stare, and silence.
“Come on, dude, life is good,” the stoned men lamented, guitars strung over shoulders. Beer foam on mustaches. “You're really up-tight, dude.”
I continued the stare, perhaps increasing the obdurate insistence on stonewalling them.
“You need to smile,” the girls ordered, miffed at my stubborn holdout. “Why are you so unhappy? It makes me sad to see you unhappy.”
“I'm not unhappy,” I growled.
“Then why are you glaring at us and acting so unhappy.”
“I'm not acting unhappy. My happiness or unhappiness is my business and not yours. Maybe I'm happy being unhappy and discontented and angry. Besides, happiness is over-rated. I see the constant drum roll of you forcing me to act happy as obnoxious and overbearing and an invasion of my right to act any goddam way I want.”
“YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!” screamed several girls. “WHY DON'T THEY FIRE YOU?”
A long-haired dude said, “Mellow out, dude. It can't be that bad.”
“Look, I enjoy being a negative isolationist, so back off and go on back to your love generation bullshit and stop heckling me. I've got a dirty job and I need to do it.”
And I walked away, stunning the whole crowd, perhaps ruining their day, which I must confess in a perverted manner filled me with a kind of mean-spirited joy, because, at that time in my life, although I was thoroughly enjoying myself, some twisted seed in my being relished agitating happy people, or supposedly happy people, or people trying too hard to be happy, which, I realized, was sad, and forced me to be compassionate to them, which I was, in the end. And still am.
Now this business of unbridled joy at yoga, where Reggie, a fine musician and renaissance man of the highest order, and a compassionate soul himself, seems to soak up all this happiness and send it back out like a human power company of endless positive energy, all of which I ignore as I busy myself with limbering up, day dreaming, concocting stories in my head, trying to remember scraps of dialogue on all sides of me, involving myself with a few of these people with low key hellos and quickly separating myself from the beauty and happiness on all sides of me.
All this happiness and outpouring of reverence for beauty embarrasses me, and I am ever so thankful when I show up at yoga class on mornings in which the weather is a nightmare and the joyous are a tinge subdued, and Reggie gets to tell us that “even though it's bad out there, in here we can make our own sunlight.”
That's more like it, and tolerable.
I always feel squeezed to agree with these people, male or female, and resent this, feeling that if I don't echo their enthusiasm for another beautiful day in beautiful Morro Bay I am a kill joy and worse yet some kind of grumpy old bastard, a curmudgeon or misanthrope, or, most deplorable, a person so cynical and negative that I do not belong in yoga class and am observed, as always, as some kind of intruder, an invasive element threatening to ruin the harmony and serendipity in yoga class, where happiness and well being prevails over what exists outside this little world.
A couple of these older babes seem too happy and in tune with a joyous world. I hear them talking before class and their giddy appreciation of life and its beautiful surroundings continues. This behavior sets a trend of others joining in on the joy of being alive in beautiful Morro Bay, further increasing my paranoia as a skeptical outsider who does not wake up every day and greet it with enthusiasm just because the sun is out and there is no wind and it's not to hot or cold, but totally benign, and the view as always is of sparkling splendor...
I feel like telling these people that I wake up every morning hoping it won't be too hot, because I hate heat, and love gloomy overcast windless days that are perfect for tennis, and that I don't mind fog, and that since I live on a bluff two blocks from the beach and have a deck with a view of beautiful Estero Bay in Cayucos and the large rock jutting up in beautiful Morro Bay, that I am spoiled to it and take it for granted unless I am sick or incapacitated from surgery or fearful of oncoming life threatening surgeries.
Otherwise, unless this is all threatened to be taken away from me, as well as my leisurely shuffle through life that suffers no intrusions, please, I am not one to gush about being alive or expressing appreciation and gratefulness at the beauty surrounding me, and do not wish to be coerced into acting so at yoga class. Instead, I prefer to wonder what infiltrates a human being to behave in such an ecstatic manner. Is there some hidden subconscious or psychological motive? Or is it just that yoga as an entity infuses them with a state of well being bordering on utter bliss?
I have trouble looking at such folks and it reminds me of the 1960s when I was a bartender at a hot joint on the pier in Manhattan Beach down south, before the millionaires ruined it, and hippies were everywhere, forcing their joyous discovery of life by insisting that “Life was beautiful and this was the first day of the rest of your life” and all that bullshit. Even when drunk and in a great mood, I refused to give in and agree with these trendy fools and in fact stared at them with a blank expression, so that some of the long-haired dudes and their babes in flowery sundresses with hair under their arms, insisted I SMILE!
At this overture, my reaction was always a withering stare, and silence.
“Come on, dude, life is good,” the stoned men lamented, guitars strung over shoulders. Beer foam on mustaches. “You're really up-tight, dude.”
I continued the stare, perhaps increasing the obdurate insistence on stonewalling them.
“You need to smile,” the girls ordered, miffed at my stubborn holdout. “Why are you so unhappy? It makes me sad to see you unhappy.”
“I'm not unhappy,” I growled.
“Then why are you glaring at us and acting so unhappy.”
“I'm not acting unhappy. My happiness or unhappiness is my business and not yours. Maybe I'm happy being unhappy and discontented and angry. Besides, happiness is over-rated. I see the constant drum roll of you forcing me to act happy as obnoxious and overbearing and an invasion of my right to act any goddam way I want.”
“YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE!” screamed several girls. “WHY DON'T THEY FIRE YOU?”
A long-haired dude said, “Mellow out, dude. It can't be that bad.”
“Look, I enjoy being a negative isolationist, so back off and go on back to your love generation bullshit and stop heckling me. I've got a dirty job and I need to do it.”
And I walked away, stunning the whole crowd, perhaps ruining their day, which I must confess in a perverted manner filled me with a kind of mean-spirited joy, because, at that time in my life, although I was thoroughly enjoying myself, some twisted seed in my being relished agitating happy people, or supposedly happy people, or people trying too hard to be happy, which, I realized, was sad, and forced me to be compassionate to them, which I was, in the end. And still am.
Now this business of unbridled joy at yoga, where Reggie, a fine musician and renaissance man of the highest order, and a compassionate soul himself, seems to soak up all this happiness and send it back out like a human power company of endless positive energy, all of which I ignore as I busy myself with limbering up, day dreaming, concocting stories in my head, trying to remember scraps of dialogue on all sides of me, involving myself with a few of these people with low key hellos and quickly separating myself from the beauty and happiness on all sides of me.
All this happiness and outpouring of reverence for beauty embarrasses me, and I am ever so thankful when I show up at yoga class on mornings in which the weather is a nightmare and the joyous are a tinge subdued, and Reggie gets to tell us that “even though it's bad out there, in here we can make our own sunlight.”
That's more like it, and tolerable.