As I sit in silence today, completely out of energy from no food for three days, I wonder, “Are we having fun here? Are we getting from this experience what we wanted?”
Yes. Absolutely.
Now, does that mean that every hour is filled with butterflies and rainbows? I don’t think so. I have felt anti-social since I got lost yesterday afternoon, and the yoga poses are making me dizzy. Wasps are digging their way out of all of the wood furniture in our room and I would kill for a Butterfinger right now. But that’s not the point.
Yesterday, as I was just going through the motions in morning yoga, feeling sorry for myself and thinking that I was the worst yogi here, when our instructor, Manoj, told us to “smile for the rest of the day.” He then went on to explain that when people are depressed, they are sometimes prescribed three days of smiling in Nepal, and that this tends to have a strong positive outcome. He said, “You can change your mood by changing your face.”
And as I listened, I was reminded that this is all about perspective. We are in paradise, on top of a hill, in a comfortable safe place with kind people, soothing music and each other.
This is exactly what I had hoped for.
