Forced Flexibility

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“Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” – unknown

I had to get rid of a settee from my bedroom. It was a holdover from my marriage, beautiful but useless. It sat in the corner holding books. But my kids have been arguing at night when we read together about who gets to sit where so I put the settee on the curb with a free sign. It was gone within hours and then I was free to build out a reading space on the floor.

That’s not the only change going on around here. I’ve been shuffling up my morning routine and have landed on feeding and walking the dog before I meditate. It isn’t really how I envisioned my feet hitting the floor. But it works well enough to create the calm I need for my sacred morning time.

I’ve been thinking about these as examples of how I’m being flexible for the beings in my home. But I suspect that I’m the biggest beneficiary of this practice. Left to my own devices, I would do the same routine every day in perpetuity.

But that sameness doesn’t loosen me up so I stiffen over time. It reminds me of the aphorism, “what doesn’t bend, breaks.” I’d like to think I’d bob and weave if I wasn’t being “flexible for the kids” but I’m not so sure.

It’s all part of their plan to keep me young. It’s like yoga for my soul – these exercises that keep my innards loose enough to go with the flow. I get a lot of practice being a tree that will sway with the wind instead of a stick dropped in the mud.

I write this to encourage myself to be flexible. Because I don’t like it much at all. I’m stubborn and dogged by nature and that has taken me far in pushing through to mountain summits and every other metaphorical summit. Yet I see the goodness practicing this acceptance and letting go of what is. It frees me up to create and be the next thing.

(featured photo from Pexels)

43 thoughts on “Forced Flexibility”

  1. I completely understand having to change a morning routine, wanting to go with the flow, but not liking it 100%. I write my morning pages as soon as I wake up. It’s my brain dump to get all the cobwebs and lingering worries out. Then I walk. In the summer when it’s too hot, I have to walk first to get out before the heat. I’ve spent 45 minutes walking and talking with my husband before I return to my morning pages. They don’t have the same calming or clearing out effect, but I do them anyway.

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  3. When I was a teacher, I use to offer a weekly challenge. One was to change one thing about their life, for a week, and journal about it. Not big changes, just minor adjustments. Some chose to wake up 10 minutes earlier, and understandably they noticed that it made a difference. The student that touched me the most, though, was a tough looking boy, who never smiled. He decided to smile at at least one random person a day. He proudly reported at the end of the week that people were nicer to him and actually started saying hi. Small changes can be transformational.

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  4. Love this…and I find I often need the reminder of my own resilience — changing even small things serves as a boost. I can be the original creature of habit in need of breaking out of my own shell. Cheers to you for flipping a few things around. 🥰

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  6. I’m like you in that, left to my own devices, I’m stubbornly inflexible. Adding other creatures and circumstances almost forces the practice of flexibility, but in a way that helps us expand the boundaries of our inflexibility and loosen up a bit. The analogy of yoga for my soul feels so true.

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    1. I love your phrase “expand the boundaries of our inflexibility.” Wow, that’s so good, Erin! Thank goodness for other creatures and circumstances. Thanks for the wonderful comment, my friend!

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  7. Isn’t change just another way to look at learning and growing perspective? We all have routines and they work- which is why we keep them of course. I don’t think it benefits us to see routine as being inflexible but perhaps a kinder way is simply to keep in mind that changing things up on occasion provides that fresh viewpoint which we can then choose to keep or not. That seems a lot less stressful to me 🙂

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    1. Ah yes, that is a gentler way to look at it. Taking the opportunity to change it up now and again is good for that fresh viewpoint. I like it, Deb! And traveling is one great way to do that, right?

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  8. What a great essay. Like you, “left to my own devices, I would do the same routine every day in perpetuity.” But routine becomes rut as you aptly pointed out. It’s hard to mix it up though – I drift back into my morning trough with great ease.

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    1. Oh, I’m laughing out loud, Michelle! The morning trough is a particularly deep one, isn’t it? And wow I can get so unsettled when I have to change that particular piece up. Thanks for letting me know I’m not in the trenches alone. 🙂

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  9. I wonder, is a settee smaller than a davenport? While I’m wondering that, I’m also wondering WTF a settee is. And WTF a davenport is. A couch, I know!

    Quintessential stubborn Taurus here. Flexibility is a trait I’m constantly attempting to master myself.

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    1. Geez, that’s too many furniture questions. Now I don’t even know if it was a settee even in it was in my bedroom for 20 years. Two sides, no back?

      I like your tie of stubbornness to your astrological sign. But stubborn optimism is something else, isn’t it? You’re the wordsmith but I’m thinking it’s something like determined.

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  10. I think we all struggle with wanting to be organized on top of things, then being flexible enough to go with the flow. Seems like that’s an issue that resurfaces in my life every few years. I’m leaning more into flexibility lately, but not sure to what degree.

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    1. Love how you surfaced it as a dichotomy between organization and flexible. Feels right to me. It reminds me of how I heard Barack Obama pretty much wore the same suit every day when president because that was one less decision he had to make. When we change up everything then we also have more things we have to choose.

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  11. Imagine if we all could be more flexible in our thoughts and actions! What a world that could be!

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  13. What a beautiful reflection on life, Wynne.

    Your post made me randomly think of two Saturday mornings ago when I saw a group of elderly women – much older than you! – doing tai chi at the park square. My colleague and I were remarking that this is how certain people stay young and live longer. It’s both exercising the body but also the mind and spirit.

    Look forward to seeing your new reading spot.

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  15. Fun quote from Unknown. I also like yours: “instead of a stick dropped in the mud. ” Ha! And “pushing through to mountain summits and every other metaphorical summit.” Brilliant. Getting rid of the settee was a great solution.

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  16. “It was a holdover from my marriage, beautiful but useless.” – pondering your metaphor! And then this is so good – “Yet I see the goodness practicing this acceptance and letting go of what is. It frees me up to create and be the next thing.”💖

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  18. This is such a good piece! Short, yet full of great points and lessons and told from experience🤩 I like to think I’m pretty flexible, and usually I think it’s true- but there are a few things that seem so important the way they are that I have trouble accepting change with them.

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  19. Very good points here, Wynne! 💞💞💞 I crave my routines and ‘sameness’, and yet the last few decades have insisted that I learn how to be Gumby, with numerous shifts, plot twists, and ‘roll with it’ moments. I think that makes my routines even more valued to me when I can fall back into them.

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