My daughter, who has resolutely defied my attempts to indoctrinate her into the wisdom of yoga, has somehow absorbed some of yoga’s trickiest lessons and is now teaching them back to me.
The other day I was in a state of panic about my parents, who live 2,500 miles away and were not answering their phone. They’d been off the hook for 24 hours. They are ancient, frail creatures, and the last time they left my radar for an extended period, they were in the hospital, my mother officially admitted after a fall and my dad sleeping on the floor next to her despite the resistance of the hospital staff.
So my anxiety was not entirely unjustified. I confided my distress to my daughter. And here is what she e-mailed back to me: “remember that its out of your control.”
It’s hard to explain why those words are so comforting. But they are the perfect response to this kind of situation. Because somehow I felt I could prevent disaster if I were just smarter or could be in two places at once or … but in fact it was out of my control.
Oh, and they're fine. They simply didn't notice that they'd knocked the handset off the hook.
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