A few years ago, a teacher encouraged the class I was in to be curious.  You know how sometimes you hear something that sounds profound, but you don’t really know what it means.

Possibly, because there are multiple meanings, as if it were a master key to many doors, some of them still hidden.

There is one door I’ve trodden a path to recently.

An illustration.

I invited a friend to come to a yoga class with me as my entourage.

(One needs entourage sometimes, even at a yoga class, and my friend had other, more …uhm… appropriate, motives, so let’s just not get distracted by the whole yoga class entourage idea.  My point is…)

We made plans, I was looking forward to the outing.  Then I checked with him the evening before, and he said he couldn’t make it, because he had a birthday party to go to.

(For all you grown up individuals out there reading this, I am way too old to be upset by this, but…)

Outwardly, I got jokingly upset, as if I was just giving him a hard time to tease him.  But I also felt hurt for real.  Logically, I could see how it wasn’t a big deal.  Birthdays happen once a year.  I go to classes by myself all the time.  Sometimes I run into tango friends or yoga friends there, sometimes I don’t.  That day, I could use a friend for strength, but not badly enough to justify how badly I felt.

I sat quietly for a few minutes, opened the door for the feelings, and invited them to come closer.  With curiosity.  I said hello to them.

I breathed to sense them.  They were not specific at first.  They didn’t go away.  But they didn’t bite either.  They sat with me for a while and then they told me what they truly were: I felt validated in my unimportance.  My friend didn’t intend that, that’s just where I hurt.  It didn’t go away, but now we knew each other.  When I woke up in the morning, it was gone.  All was well.

With this meaning of curiosity, having “negative” feelings is almost enjoyable: new interesting friends!  To take it further, crying inevitably teaches me something, if I stay curious, so here is to crying: