Most people have had the thought their body should be different than it is, at some point in their lives.
For some strange reason, I had a funny memory the other day.
It wafted through my mind…and I remembered how much this one “thought” taught me.
I was pregnant with my son.
This was my first baby (he is 20 now) and the whole experience was new, exciting, fascinating and strange.
How bizarre what happens here on planet earth, multiplying, dividing, oneness, separation. Constant falling apart and coming together.
But I digress.
I remember vividly standing in my living room of the cute little house where I lived with my then-husband, looking out the window through the slatted shades to the street, smiling with the bright late spring sun outside and the cool wooden floor beneath my bare feet.
I held my stomach and felt how thick it was on the outside, how round. I could look down and see the big curve.
Then I had a thought.
Wouldn’t it be nice right now to stretch up very tall on my tiptoes, both arms overhead, and suck in my stomach way back towards my spine with a deep inward breath, then let it all out.
Then instantly, realizing it was impossible for now….for weeks ahead, impossible for months….OMG.
A rush of adrenaline flicked through me!
And then….awareness.
If I hope for this right now, in this moment, I will be completely and 100% disappointed. Because that physical body stretch is impossible.
It’s an argument with reality.
I saw it, then I moved away from it, realizing how painful it would be to be to actually believe and spend time feeling that thought.
What thought would you like to move away from?
Why not do it?
If it hurts to believe it….could you drop that idea that you MUST have that experience (even if it’s something so small as stretching your arms up and sucking in your stomach)?
Who would you be without the thought that you’re stuck, or trapped, and things aren’t going well, right now?
For me…completely free.
I dropped the thought, without knowing it was an option until right then at that moment.
And it didn’t mean I didn’t stretch my arms way up in the air, reach up on my tip toes, arch back towards the sky, and suck in my stomach with a huge deep breath and feel the beautiful inward motion of it….very soon after I gave birth, and my body could do it again.
“You’re either attaching to your thoughts and feeling sadness, or investigating. The worst that can happen, now, is a thought.” ~ Byron Katie
Love, Grace
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