The Lazy Yogi

I’ve been living like a hermit for the past year. My first year out of college could be boiled down to one single struggle: Me vs. the Bed. 

Graduating college, I had believed I would be home for no more than a few months before finding a job and moving out. However, things don’t always go according to plan. And now I’m still living here as I seek out prospects in NYC. 

All of that I am perfectly fine with. Life has been an unceasing adventure. But while I’m living at home, I don’t have my own room. I sleep on a pullout couch with an inflatable mattress. I have had to renounce things like personal space and outer solitude. 

But nothing has troubled me so much as this fucking inflatable mattress. Pardon my language. It has holes in it. Try as I might to inspect and tape up every hole, it deflates every night. 

So every night for the past year I have had to re-inflate my bed. If I sit in bed reading for more than an hour, it will deflate entirely. Rage! Rage. 

Last week I was sitting in bed and heard a loud POP. Then my bed started deflating at an alarming rate. At first I was going to get all the duct tape in the world and go to town on it. Then I just let it go. The bed deflated all the way to the baseboard. 

What I was left with was a hard base topped with a tempurpedic mattress pad. I lay down and to my surprise discovered an entirely new and incredibly comfortable bed. It is much smoother and flatter than the inflated mattress. It was at rest and required no maintenance. It was Peace. 

Laughter bubbled up from my chest and knocked about in sporadic chuckles. I had been struggling every day with inflating a bed riddled with holes, only to repeat the same task every night. It was samsara, the endless effort to be just barely satisfied. But by surrendering and withdrawing my effort to sustain the cycle, the whole thing collapsed into a beautiful result. 

It spoke to me sincerely concerning the effort to inflate the ego, to sustain samsara, and to Surrender. And now I can sleep soundly. :)

Namaste, sangha.