Leap-Frog.
I showered with a frog the other day.
Obstacles. Annoyances. Challenges. Hills to climb. Or get around. Or kick and turn away from. Maybe not kick and just turn away from. Or stare at blankly and just watch the sun and moon repeatedly exchange places over. There are many ways to accomplish the same thing.
A few years back a friend shared this poem with me that surfaces my memory in near every challenge or decision since. If you know me IRL (it’s cool to use internet lingo, right? IRL= In Real Life) it’s likely that I’ve shared it with you. It’s called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters and talks about how as we experience a situation more we learn better ways to solve it and usually the best scenario is to not keep getting yourself in similar situations and breaking bad patterns (these aren’t situations we enjoy being in).
I remember loving the game leap-frog as a kid. It was goofy, active, playful, and gave everyone a fair dose of adrenaline, laughter, and usually some sort of bruise or bang. What kid’s dreams are made of. This idea that you need to get from where you are to somewhere else and that there are frogs in between you and that desired location. Frogs that require you to get on all fours, act frog-like, and jump up over (and sometimes onto and off of or over). Super aggressive. Requires a ton of energy and strength. Yet a beloved game embedded in many childhood memories.
If you’re familiar with the astanga yoga practice and how it’s full of so many chaturangas and jumping things, it’s kind of like the leap-frog of yoga. People start astanga and either love it or hate it because of the ‘energy’ of the rigor and challenge. For those who drink the kool-aid, there are days where you are practicing this repetitive set sequence that you just don’t feel like you want to be doing cartwheels off of the roof into the pool and you think to yourself why in the hell are we doing so many yoga pushups and working so hard?! Looking at the history books we learn that astanga was originally practiced by teenage boys who absolutely need to move and work their bodies with the amount of energy it takes to do cartwheels off of the roof into the pool AKA all of the chaturangas and jumping in the sequence. Where I’m getting with all of this is that some quests are hills to jump up on and climb, while others are things we should calmly move away from. Some chapters in our lives give us the energy to approach all problems like we’re leaping frogs while other chapters in our lives give us the energy to just walk away from things that aren’t serving us. We might all be getting around or over similar hills, but our journeys are different and have different after-tastes. Choose wisely. Or just choose and be aware of your approach in general.
I’m living in a small peninsula that contains 2.5% of the entire world’s biodiversity so the variety of species I’m living amongst is nothing short of abundant. I wouldn’t call my shower an outdoor shower necessarily, but everything at this eco-retreat is very Frank Lloyd Wright esque in the sense that it is integrated into the environment that was here before. A bat flew into my room and into my face the other day, crabs crawl everywhere and one pinched my ankle last week (I think he was getting friendly), and this frog keeps telling me to save water and shower together and refuses to leave the shower at night. The first few times I saw him in there I would try to get him out or wait for him to leave, but eventually I got tired of adjusting to his schedule and just let him join the rinse. For the record, he was not a fan of the water and poor thing hid in the corner of the shower and I have yet to see him come back since. Either he realized it was risky business hanging in there or I gave his frog-heart an attack.
We are a resilient species and capable of much adaptation. It’s not what issues we face, but how we handle them that is significant. It can be as simple as how we do our daily chores, like wrapping up hoses or letting the frog stay in the shower, to as big as saying “no” to something you don’t want to do despite making someone else upset. Leap-frog is fun for kids and high energy times, but it’s also nice to take a slow stroll in the park every now and again.