Green Lemonade

“Even when life does not take us where we expect to go and those around us are not always who we expect them to be, we can still participate fully in life. We can also be of service and in doing so we not only help others, but we immediately generate within ourselves our own sense of peace, joy and well being.” – Elisabeth J. Neuse

Over the last year, I have found great joy in trying new activities. One activity I have really enjoyed learning more about is yoga – there are so many forms and so many different experiences to be tried and enjoyed. The studio where you practice, as well as the teacher with whom you practice can also have an tremendous impact. Participating in a new YogaWorks studio which recently opened up in my neighborhood has allowed me to explore both the physical as well as the mental practice of yoga as well as the happiness that has come from meeting so many wonderful people. Elizabeth Neuse is one such person. Elizabeth is a private therapeutic and vinyasa yoga instructor here in New York City. In addition to her instruction here in New York, she hosts rejuvenation retreats, and maintains a wonderful and inspirational blog. She recently shared this passage on her blog and gave me permission to share it with you here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Many thanks again, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth writes…

Swan Song

During a trip home to St. Louis this past weekend I spent 3 days running around, as always, visiting all the people I love who still live there. I came in, as I often do, with a sense of anxiety about certain family dynamics and situations that were not the way I wanted or expected them to be, but I promised myself I would stay open to just being with people in the most loving way I could. And in doing so I was able to connect in a different way, to see things not as I wanted them to be, but as they really were.

On my last evening I visited my mother and her very new husband in their very new apartment, which overlooks a retention pond. My mother showed me around the small, opulently decorated space, the eighth place she had lived in as many years, and I thought about how weird it was that after all that moving she ended up living 2 miles from my dad in a place one-twelfth the size of the last place she lived with him. “This is all the space anybody really needs,” she commented, mixing her first evening cocktail- vodka, turned pink by a splash of cranberry juice.

As she splashed and mixed I asked her if she’d made any friends in the complex. “Well, one,” she said. “Her name is Swany, at least that’s what I call her. She lives down in the pond. Come on, let’s go visit her.” She grabbed her cocktail, her new husband and a sleeve of Saltines and we all went down to the pond to see Swany. On the way there my mom told me that Swany’s wings had been clipped so that she couldn’t fly up above the high stone walls of the pond and leave, but that she had her own little island in the middle of the pond and a swan hut where she slept during inclimate weather.

“She must be lonely out there with no other swans around,” I said. My mom agreed, but explained that Swany had appointed herself caretaker of a family of geese with five little goslings. She protected them from any other geese that came to the pond, as well as the cheeky muskrats that swam up and tried to eat the mother’s eggs and the babies when they first hatched. Now that the goslings were bigger she had taken to leading them around the pond single file in search of food.

When we walked up to the edge, they made a bee line over to us, Swany leading the gaggle. But when we threw the crackers in, as my mom predicted, Swany didn’t touch them. She let every gosling have more than their share before she took one cracker for herself. Even the mother and father geese snatched crackers from the little ones, but not Swany. She waited, elegantly, peacefully, understanding that there would be enough for everyone including her when it was her turn.

After the geese finished eating, as instructed by my mom, I nervously leaned over the edge with a cracker between my fingers, while my mom reminded me of the time I fell into my grandparent’s winterized pool and she had to jump into the freezing slime and save me. Swany swam to the edge and mustered all the momentum she could from her clipped wings to get high enough to take the cracker from my hand. I squealed as she playfully snatched it and then plopped down into the water again, nibbling and wiggling her tail feathers in delightful gratitude. She and the geese followed us around the entire pond until the next group of humans came to see them and she had to perform her protective duties again.

That evening I recognized in Swany, as Ram Dass would say, my guru in drag. She was placed somewhere that she probably did not want to be, with none of her kind around and no real chance for escape. But instead of becoming a stereotypically cantankerous old swan, she decided to become a bodhisattva, the selfless servant to a family that was not her own, to protect them from harm and help them thrive.

Swany, reminded to me that even when life does not take us where we expect to go and those around us are not always who we expect them to be, we can still participate fully in life. We can also be of service and in doing so we not only help others, but we immediately generate within ourselves our own sense of peace, joy and well being.

When the goslings get older, the whole family will probably leave Swany and fly south for the winter. I’m not sure how old she is or if she will survive the cold, but if she does, I bet she will keep supporting the unfolding of life in whatever form it comes to her.

Namaste,
EJ Neuse