Life is a practice.
We cultivate good habits for “performances” we don’t know are coming.
Habits: thinking, doing, making things happen. If we don’t cultivate good ones, when the time comes that we need them, we might be S.O.L.
If you practice patience in small ways — at the grocery store, when sending an email, when tying your shoelace — you are preparing yourself for the “big event” when you have to wait for test results from the medical lab, or that big job promotion, or those 6 months when you’re unemployed.
If you practice compassion in small ways — the elderly woman crossing the street, the injured bird in your backyard, the child who missed his morning school bus — you are preparing yourself for the “big event” when your family member has been convicted of a crime, or when the boss you loathe has been diagnosed with cancer, or your sister’s pregnancy ends in miscarriage.
These habits of mind — skills of thinking and perspective — are never perfected. They are approached, they are cultivated, they are developed, they are tended to.
They are practiced. It is the practice that grounds us, that keeps us close to what’s real and what’s right and what’s known. This is why we must practice often and with consistence. It is continual; there is no end. We stay real this way.
Practice.
Transformation is sustained change, and it is achieved through practice.
B.K.S. Iyengar
