I’ve been asking this question for years – Better to be right or be free? Last week I asked: ‘better to be right or be love?’ And my friend Kathleen asked: ‘better to be right or be happy?’ It’s all the same to me – and yet even as I type, I’m convicted by my own actions.
Yesterday I was angry with my studio manager. For three weeks there has been nobody present at the front desk to check in my Saturday morning yoga class. My student who works for the studio has stepped in but that wasn’t fair to her; she’d come to take class, not to work. When I saw my studio manager, my own manager persona kicked. I am a director in another part of my life and I manage a team.
“Do you have a strategy for making sure that this doesn’t happen again?” I asked her.
I sat firmly in my rightness.
But I didn’t think about the way that my energy made others feel – those who were sitting in the lobby with no context and who are used to interacting with me differently.
In hindsight, I wished I’d communicated differently.
Where does being right ever really get us? Everything that ever will happen will happen whether we try to control it or not. And other people always show us where we are stuck. In this way, they are our teachers. If we open our eyes and allow our hearts to soften, we realize that all of these experiences are here to teach us. Everyone is our teacher and our most difficult situations show us where we have blockages to love.
I am learning that I’d rather be love because it feels better. I am learning how to communicate my needs without being unloving ~ because I want to contribute to what is good in the world. There is enough aggression.
Join me on this return to Love?
Thank You Very Sweet 