Beauty in this uneasy thing

This weekend's another YTT weekend for me, and I'm just home now (it's really actually Saturday night when I'm writing this, but you'll be reading this on Sunday morning, while I'm wishing I'd slept in) from a very long, very physically intense day.

A fantastic day with a ton of good energy, a lot of laughter shared, but also a very demanding work. I spent the better part of the day laughing, even through hard postures, there was just this wonderful feeling in the air of oneness, of shared enjoyment. Seemingly random things just seemed to sync so well with one another, conversations, ideas, it was one of those eerie times when you think it can't all just be a coincidence. But then, that seems to be happening a fair bit in my life lately. Not all good, but in this instance, it was.

And yet, when I left tonight, I suddenly felt down. And more than down, I felt angry. Ready to snap at things, and I couldn't figure out why, because in the past, I did have sessions in YTT where I went home thinking "well that was BS wasn't it". There's things that don't align with me, certainly, and when those popped up, I disagreed openly and also later in private. However, today that didn't happen, not at all, so I had to sit and figure out whence my bad vibes, I suppose.

Random snap leaving class. Because I don't think I have a decent-looking photo from today's/yesterday's practice.

And I realized, the reason I think I was that way, was that although it was a good day and everyone went home quite up and happy, it wasn't an easy day. It was a very challenging, perhaps one of the most challenging days in our course. And I mean that on a physical level for sure, but also on a personal one, emotionally it was very much, and I think my frustration was with the hardship of the whole process. But where in the past, it would've come out as lashing out at someone. Maybe someone in my class - oh they're so irritating, or my family, or someone, some random thing. I'm annoyed by X thing. But not tonight, Tonight, I just sat with it until I figured out what it was and didn't even veer towards my go-to, my much easier "blame it and pile it on someone else".

And maybe that's growth.

It was especially shocking because where I normally "escape" during lunch break to be on my own for a while (much needed for an introvert like me), today I didn't, I just ate with people and talked and it was just unusual for me.

You know, I was surprised to find that despite this immersion into our shared experience, despite the many difficult and unpleasant moments, I felt surrounded by this sort of general beauty and gratefulness, really. To be able to see these people and coexist with them at this moment in their lives.

It was fantastic, and to be fair, I've had this sense increasingly about this process for about a month now, but I think it was crystallized in my mind only today. Just talking with people who are so different and seeing, you know, what their struggles or pet peeves or goals are in this particular moment, in their private lives, unknown to me. It was just...beautiful.

Even people I found annoying or difficult before, there was just this overpowering sense of "well, this is who this person is in their reality right now, and you can't really change that, and maybe how they are isn't so awful and shouldn't bother you so much" and that's been overflowing in most areas of my life right now. It's been immensely helpful, too, in processing everything that's been happening.

We are officially closer to the end of my training than we are to its beginning and I think I'm getting more of a sense that we are all just sharing this difficult, weird, taxing process together in this now. That we're united in this common experience, and this is how it is. Regardless how it may seem in the moment (annoying, difficult or fantastic). This is what it is. And I can take it or put myself in its path, but it's still coming. So.

I don't know. They warned us it would be an intense process emotionally and psychologically, but to be honest, I didn't think it would be quite like this. Lucky. Maybe.