Photo: markn3tel Photo: ljlandre

This is #37 of 108 Ways to Livin’ the Moment. Let’s take back our lives one beautiful, funny, and delicious moment at a time.

#37 of 108:  Get Under It!

Our wounds are openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.
~ David Richo, therapist and author.

Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.
~ Wendell Berry, conservationist and author

The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
~ Barbara Kingslover, American novelist

In 2006, I went on a yoga retreat to an Ayurvedic Resort in Southern India.

I signed up for an Ayurvedic massage, expecting a female therapist.

I sat upright in confusion when two shirtless men in trousers greeted me in the waiting area.

“No, no, no, no!” I thought, or even might have said out loud. I was too shocked to remember specifics.

Is it wrong that I prefer to have a massage with a woman?

But that was the only option in India.

So I relented and tried to relax.

But the men began to step all over me with their feet.

I couldn’t take it and sat up telling the two men, “Stop it. Just stop it.”

The head Ayurvedic doctor entered the room and asked what was wrong.

I told him, “I don’t want to be massaged by two men.”

He said to me, “You have to get under it!” and walked out.

There was supposed to be something much deeper about this Ayurvedic massage than sensual touch.

That is the Ancient Eastern world’s secret to healing in its raw and most natural form. Not to eradicate but to uproot.

This is a lesson that America needs so desperately.

Our divisive politics will bare their soul tonight in the first Presidential debate.

And what we need to realize is that this “bare soul” belongs to each of us!

We have no choice but “to get under” our differences.

You might watch that debate tonight and think to yourself, “Those gosh-darn (the party you are not voting for) are idiots!”

But unless we get our under our differences, we will be a stunted nation—like a confused, middle aged man stuck in his adolescence—looking to fight when he doesn’t even have the strength to stand on his own two feet.

So here’s a personal challenge because change starts with you and me.

Reach out to someone you know who has vastly different politics, someone whose opinions cause you to avoid them.

And find a common ground.

Whether that common ground is based on love or sports or faith…

Get under it!

Editor: Lynn Hasselberger

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