Thank You for Being a Friend

I heard some great wisdom from the instructor in a yin yoga class this week.

Stay friendly with what’s happening.

Stay friendly. What exactly does that mean?

Be pleasant when a thin-staffed restaurant has poor customer service?

Be kind to the person trying to help you after a 60-minute wait on that 1-800 number?

Don’t go on the attack in that Facebook group?

I am part of a NH 4000-footer group, and just last week someone posted about being on the top of a mountain and her 140-pound dog was refusing to go any further. The dog’s paw pads were cut up from the rocky terrain, and the woman was stuck, not sure what to do.

She didn’t have a strong enough cell signal to call anyone—and who would she call, anyway? She could not carry the heavy dog all the way down on her own. So, she posted on Facebook, “Can anyone help? Anyone nearby who has any ideas?”

This kind of thing happens periodically in this group—people ask for advice before going on a challenging hike, or ask questions on a trail when they aren’t sure where else to turn. A hiker might not have access to a cell signal to make a call but they can get a message out asking if anyone else is nearby on the same peak who might be able to help them.

And people are generally quite kind and helpful.

But sometimes, they go for the jugular.

As in, “I NEVER go hiking with my dog without paw pads. You need to KNOW what your dog can handle. You should NEVER go up a mountain without a pack to put your dog in. That’s irresponsible.”

But others responded, “She clearly loves her dog! She didn’t know this would happen! She can’t carry a 140-pound dog down the mountain; be realistic!”

And some actually showed up with a sling and helped her carry the dog down the mountain.

So, what I learned in my yin yoga class this week: Stay friendly with what is happening.

What great advice!

Now, not everything benefits from friendliness. Sometimes there are things we must push against and tackle. creating social change, for example. But sometimes we have more resistance to things in our lives that don’t really benefit from that opposition. These are the things we are talking about here.

So, in addition to being friendly to others, what else might we stay friendly with? What gets stuck in your craw?

Maybe it’s focusing on that one irritant that always puts you over the edge, like your family leaving dirty dishes in the sink or expecting you to pick up after them, and working on being friendlier to that.

Or maybe it's facing that loss of a family member that you are grieving.

Or that annoying person that you mentally push against at work.

Or that tightness or inflexibility in your left hip when you are trying to do yin yoga.

What does it look like to be friendly with those things? To bring those things closer to you, rather than pushing them away?

This makes me think of that song by Petra: “Don’t let your heart be hardened / Don’t let your love grow cold / May it always stay so childlike / May it never grow too too old…”

All of us can work on softening the heart. On inviting that situation or person in.

The yoga instructor said, "We don't invite people in to our liver. It's our heart that needs to be opened."

What does it look like or feel like to keep your heart and mind softened, open?

What is happening in your life that you may need to be friendly to right now?