Note from Louisa

​When I was a little girl, I had the honor of seeing Rudolph Nureyev dance with the Kirov Ballet. One of my earliest exposures to professional ballet, I sat transfixed, breath suspended just as he appeared impossibly suspended in the air while executing one of his famous leaps.
 
For long after, I remember thinking of his performance as having starfish like qualities, a strange comparison, even for a small child. It wasn’t until much later that I would better understand what that meant. 
 
At the time, I just watched his unapologetic command of both time and gravity, legs gracefully splayed in opposing directions, perched on thin air six feet above the stage, seemingly able to move in any given direction at one time.
 
It turns out that the starfish is also capable of this feat. Though it certainly leaves much to be desired in the execution of a Grand Jete and has little to no performance presence, starfish can move in any direction by simply following whichever leg is pointed the way it would like to go. It does not need to turn per se, it just pivots and allows another body part to lead.
 
This analogy, that of the “graceful pivot” has been one of my guiding aphorisms for the last seven years. Life has thrown a lot at my family in that period, and a lot at humanity as a whole. Those of us who have been rigid or resistant during this challenging time have not fared as well as those who have at least attempted the graceful pivot.
 
Fortunately, we do not need to master superhuman athleticism to execute this survival strategy, we need only to understand and practice the Buddhist meditation on the phrase “And now, it’s like this”. 
 
As homo sapiens with frequently overactive central nervous systems, we crave predictability and safety. We rehearse mentally how situations, both novel and mundane, should play out, and then experience stress when things do not go according to plan. And really, how often do things really go to plan?
 
Adopting the capacity to pivot from what was expected to what is actually unfolding, without ire, without trying to control it, or feeling defeated by our inability to do so, requires grace. Life is changing constantly and there is no playbook to help us prepare, other than our practice.
 
We too can defy time and gravity by remembering that, at any moment, we can shift directions, flow with the current instead of against it. We are never obligated to move in the same direction from which we began. There is always another way – the way of less resistance.
 
Health issues? Pivot. Pandemic? Pivot. Social unrest? Pivot. “What I expected didn’t happen. So, now it’s like this.” How else can we hope to navigate the unknown waters that lie ahead?
 
Blessings on your journey, 
Louisa