Saurya - Courage

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I've been so anxiety-ridden that I literally made a Google Doc to keep track of all of the things I am anxious about. This includes everything from remembering to get medicine for my altitude sickness, to needing to return luggage before its expiration date, to buying enough cat food, disposable litter boxes, and litter for Poppy while I'm gone.

It's possible that my brain is seizing upon these fears because it cannot, it cannot seize upon the bigger fears, like, "What if I get lost somewhere in Indonesia and literally cannot communicate with anyone?"

I had my whole trip planned and then my friend Tiago blew it all to hell when he said, "If Tumpak Sewu has been on your bucket list for years, you can't get THAT CLOSE to it and not find a way to see it."

It felt like Venice all over again, like something I would regret forever if I didn't at least try.

So I threw my ENTIRE plan -- my pretty calendars and lineups of hotel bookings, etc, etc -- out the window and started completely over!!! With the clock ticking down the days until my flights...

While teaching 7th grade for the first time...

And prepping for state testing...

In May.

My brain grabbed hold of something completely inconsequential: how will I pack for hiking frigid mountains, trekking through jungles to swim in waterfalls, and THEN doing yoga 8 hours a day on a beach... in a carry-on??

This became my all-consuming thought because the terrifying reality of actually doing it all on my own was too big to consider. 

I spent hours considering how to maximize suitcase space so I could still bring enough notebooks, pens, and sticky tabs to accommodate the actual reason I was going: to finish my 300-hour yoga certification. (I eventually decided to just wear all my least favorite clothes, in layers, and shed them along the way as I went from volcanic terrain to jungles to beaches).

Somewhere along the way, it became apparent that I was no longer going to Indonesia to study yoga. There would be yoga, of course, and it would be hard af, now that I'd be completely unprepared. That will happen when you become so consumed with converting Indonesian Rupiah into American dollars that you forget to learn all the kriyas and mudras and bandhas.

And maybe that is as it should be. Maybe yoga is what led me to Bali, but the real reason for my journey is something else entirely.

Check out these kids:

Look at that girl with her boyfriend. What a baby! God, I was heartbroken when he broke up with me. One of his seminary professors told him I wouldn't be a good match for him. He's a pastor now. He became the "Singles" leader at a megachurch and married one of the young women in his group. Man, I was so devastated that I wasn't "The One" for him.

I would like to go back and tell 20-something Elle -- It will be all right. You won't be a stay-at-home mom with a loving pastor-husband and a thriving church community. In fact, you won't ever get married or have kids, or, for that matter, go to church. And I know that makes you really sad.

Life will be hard. You will continue to get lost inside your own mind; and find it hard to connect to other people; and fail to focus on the forest or the trees because you're too worried about counting all the pine needles and keeping them color-coded.

BUT. 

You will also be the type of person who can fly 10,000 miles on her own to hike volcanos in the dark just so she can watch a sunrise at the other end of the world.

The Sanskrit word for courage is saurya -- it has the same root word as sun, surya. I suppose that courage is continuing to step into the life that you have, even when it's dark, trusting that you'll have the strength to meet whatever comes.

And that's not nothing.