Sunday in July

My birthday tomorrow. I am too old to be excited about it. It is ironic that my body is no longer flowering and changing its way to it's peak but is instead on the downward slope toward its inevitable, bit by bit, decay. All while I feel healthier, more vibrant, than I have in all my life.

For the first time, how good I feel is not affected by the vile number that assaults me every time I step on a scale or the fact that I will never look like the beautiful women I encounter in my life, on TV and in the pages of magazines. Oddly, it is perfectly alright that I will only ever be me.

I feel so good on this particular birthday, in this particular year, because I am awash with a sense of gratitude. I am grateful to breathe; fully, deeply, and with awareness. I am grateful to smile, to walk, to run, to flow through the postures of my yoga practice with strength and grace.
I feel good because I finally understand that being beautiful is an entirely internal process. It is an ever brightening sense of peaceful self acceptance that shines first within and then without.

I feel good because I am alive. I have another minute, hour, day, week, year, decade, whatever the universe decides is a long enough life for me, to live a little less fearfully. I am happy because I have decided to live a life that is more authentically me. I am learning to shake off other peoples' opinions; to lovingly shield myself from their well intentioned but poisonous bits of wisdom and advice.

I am grateful to the ancient art of yoga for becoming such an important piece of my life. For the sages and teachers of the past who have passed on the tools and knowledge that make it possible for me and countless others to know ourselves, and hence the world, a little better every day.