One of the most beautiful things I have been told by my yoga instructor was “be soft, for when you are soft, you can bend, but cannot break.” I reflected so much on this sentence, and no advice has struck as sincere and as accurate as this one.
We live in a very intense world, a world full of expectations, comparisons, restrictions, and very high, sometimes impossible, standards that we set for ourselves or are set for us by others.
The norm stops being what feels right for you, what you want to do, but rather becomes what “you have to do”and how you need to comply and conform to the “norm of society”. We endlessly compare ourselves to others, without knowing much about their journey, or their day to day life. We assess, position and rate ourselves, categorizing ourselves as successes or failures.
In the process of all this, we become rigid, inflexible and hard, mostly with ourselves. We often see any deviation from a plan as a failure, beat ourselves up over any change in circumstances, and are often too quick to harshly judge ourselves and others.
We break our happiness to conform, to fit in, we break our dreams, self-esteem and aspirations because we are so fixated on something.
Rigidity with yourself, your partner, your kids or those around you is dangerous, because we are meant to flow through life. If you don’t learn to be supple, fluid, soft and graceful you will break yourself in the process.
Being soft is being adaptable, compassionate towards yourself and others, accommodating and forgiving. Being soft, is not being weak, on the contrary, it is the utmost definition of strength. Water can reshape mountains, just like being soft with yourself, can reshape the biggest obstacles and hardest adversities.
We are after all human, and that is what we always need to remember.
Be soft, be patient, be kind and be human.
Just Another Human 