The Very Opposite of Mindful

In general I work hard to practice what I preach, being mindful in my daily life. For the most part I succeed at this but sometimes life gets the best of me.

September was a busy month. This is the first fall that I'm teaching while running yoga programs for singers privately and at a few schools and have my own two children going to two different locations for their daily routine on top of a million other things that come with living life.

The month began relatively smoothly but quickly went south when my daughter's after school program feel apart. I mean really, really fell apart. As in there was no viable after school option for her to be cared for between 2:30 and 5pm on the days I was working. After a totally sleepless night we decided that in the short term I was going to do pick up while we sought out another alternative. All well and good except that my teaching schedule for the week was set and getting home by 2:30 wasn't exactly easy.

To make a long story a little longer, I rushed like mad out of work the first day to get to pick up. I finished teaching in Cambridge at 1:45 and had to be at her preschool, 19 miles away, in 45 minutes (if you live around here you know that this seems like a potential impossibility, but dammit I was going to make it happen). After walking as fast as humanly possible from the building I teach in over to Mass Ave in Harvard Square, I crossed 1/2 of the street with the light and stood on the median waiting for the light to cross the street and it was taking forever (or so it seemed). Suddenly there was no traffic coming south on Mass Ave. I saw my break and went for it.

You see where this is going, right?

Though I had looked to my right and identified that there was no traffic coming, I failed to look to my left to see whether a bus was coming up out of the underground T station.

I boldly stepped off the curb and walked right into the side of a moving MBTA bus.

My bag was over my left shoulder, my elbow bent, sticking out, my hand holding the straps of my bag. I think that very thing is what saved me from potential disaster. My elbow hit the bus first and I instinctively recoiled up onto the median.

Though I was shocked I wasn't really hurt. The poor bus driver very nearly had a heart attack and it took much reassuring that I was actually ok, for him to be able to breathe again. I walked away with a dime sized abrasion on my elbow and the astounding realization that I had very nearly been badly injured because I was rushing and not paying attention.

How often do we all do this? Go on autopilot getting from point A to point B, only to arrive and have no memory of getting there? Have you ever sung a concert and then can't remember much of it because you were so distracted, stressed and unaware? Have you spent an hour 'practicing' when really you were thinking about everything but the music? More often than not those events result in no harm. But, sometimes, you get hit by a bus.

In hindsight I am grateful for the reminder to be present and focused and I'm sorry that it took being hit by a bus for me to remember.

Be present to your life this day, this hour, this minute. Breathe.