What the Logistics Are Really For
Can I let today's idea stay unfinished and still call it enough?
On the journey
This week we traveled. Belgium to California — walk to bus, bus to intercity train, intercity train to high-speed train, high speed train to airport, overnight at the airport, four+ hours in the terminal, eleven hours in the air, one hour in a car, and then finally, finally, home in California, well my husband’s home, we visit my home in California next week.
Our daughter did it all without complaint. Which, if you have a toddler, you understand is the actual miracle of the week and sorry definitely not sorry, I’m going to boast of that for just a moment. I was proud of us. I was more proud of her.
There was no gym this week. No structured workout, no logged miles, no sets or reps to speak of. What there was: a 30-pound child who still wants to be carried by mommy, four hours of airport entertainment that is honestly its own athletic event, and lots and lots of airport terminal steps. My arms, back, and legs registered every bit of it. The body kept score even when I wasn't.
And here's the thing — I'm okay with that. Not in the way where you say you're okay with something but you're quietly keeping a tally. Actually okay. The week asked something different of me and I gave it that instead, and nothing is behind, nothing is lost, nothing needs to be made up.
That's what it feels like when you let the unfinished thing be enough.
On coming home
On Sunday we had a gathering — fifteen people, my husband's college friends and their partners and their kids, “full group” only fully assembles once a year and every time it does, we wonder why we let a whole year go by before doing it again. We all know the answer, it’s logistics, because saying out loud that we “don’t have the time or the financials for this more than once a year” is a lot harder than just “logistics”.
At some point in the afternoon “the boys” (as they refer to themselves as on the group chat) took the kids to the park to shoot hoops, and the wives stayed back at the house. When the door closed behind them, we all looked at each other in the sudden relative quiet — and our host looked around at us and said: shots?
The answer was yes. Tentative at first, the way you say yes when you haven't had a moment that was just for you in longer than you can remember, and then louder, the way you say yes when you realize that nobody currently needs anything from you and you are allowed to just be a person with your friends for a few minutes. We grabbed the G4 tequila and — because there were no limes and no traditional chaser to speak of — a jar of bread and butter pickles. We raised our glasses. We took the shot. We chased it with a pickle.
It was one of the best moments of the day, and maybe one of the best of the year so far. Not because of the tequila. Because of what it represented — the permission, the ease, the specific freedom of being surrounded by people who know you well enough that a pickle chaser isn't weird, it's just what you do when that's what's available.
Raising a child in a different country from your original village is hard in ways that are difficult to articulate until you're back in the room with the people who have known you the longest — and then you remember, all at once, exactly what you've been missing.
I didn't fully understand how much I needed that afternoon until I was in the middle of it. And even then, I don't think I'll completely understand it until I'm back in Belgium next month, reaching for something that isn't quite there.
On tenderness
Puppy Pose in the morning. Melting Heart in the evening. That's what this week asks of you on the mat — two versions of the same surrender, one to open the day and one to close it.
I didn't do either of them this week in any formal sense. But I think I lived them anyway. The morning version looked like getting on a plane with a toddler and deciding in advance that whatever happened was going to be fine. The evening version looked like a shot of tequila with a bread and butter pickle chaser and 10 people who love each other gathered in someone's living room, cups full, nobody needing to be anywhere else.
Both of those things required the same thing the poses require: letting go of how you thought it was supposed to look, and being present for what it actually is.
Today's idea — this week, this month, this July of making room and finding what fills it — it's unfinished. It's always going to be unfinished. The month closes but the practice doesn't, the question stays open, the poses are still there next Tuesday morning waiting.
And that is enough. That has always been enough.
Can you let what this month gave you be enough — even unfinished?
Plant your feet. Open toward the light. This is how we grow.
This trip everyone got a longer hug — held past the point where it would normally end, and then a little longer than that. A few people laughed in that way that means the happy feeling arrived faster than their composure could keep up with. I recognized it because I was doing it too.