Becca Faith Yoga

Yesterday I met up with my boyfriend at Sidecar for an impromptu Sunday-evening cocktail. There I was, sipping a Sticky Fingers, when Boyfriend abandoned his Dr. Tucker’s 59 to lavish uncharacteristic attention on the chunky, plastic, black rose ring I wear on the ring finger of my right hand.  Slipping it on his pinky, he asks me why I don’t wear it on my left-hand ring finger.  It’s bad luck, I tell him, that finger is reserved. I try to keep my voice casual, even though Boyfriend has progressed to rooting around the inside pocket of his heavy wool coat, the one he’s refused to take off despite the comfortable warmth of the bar.

Holy crap. It’s happening. It’s happening right now. Right. Now. Of course it’s now, two days before our three-year anniversary, while we’re sitting close in a booth at a cute New York bar the way we love to do, the way we would on any other Sunday. It’s not in my drink — win.  We’re not at a national sporting event — win win. This is the man I love — win win win.

“I have something nicer for you,” he says.  And he did:

Anniversary Bling

Boyfriend looked on as I slipped the ring onto my right ring finger, all the way down to…my second knuckle. It’s a half-size too small (or my finger is a half-size too big). I told him how much I adore it. He told me it can be sized. I stared at it a little more, taking in how unique and beautiful and essentially me it is. That’s my birthstone — amethyst — at the center. I love its weight, and that I won’t have to take it off to practice yoga, and that I can wear it every day. I love that it’s from the man I love. I love that it’s for my right hand.

Because the truth is, I’m absolutely content with where my relationship is right now.  We talk about getting married and sometimes I jokingly give him a hard time about getting engaged, but really, I don’t feel — I’ve never felt — like I’m waiting for that to happen. Even during that fleetingly disappointing, anticlimactic moment when the band didn’t slip effortlessly to its place, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for that to happen, either.  I just felt a sense of receiving, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

In the last few weeks I’ve been noticing how offensive the act of waiting is to some people.  Just last week I was at the bank, and everyone on line seemed to resent having to be there.  Not there at the bank — just there in line.  There was a lot of harrumphing and sighing and superfluous watch-checking.

What if we all chose to stop waiting for things to happen, and woke up to the fact that something is always happening, right now? In line at the bank, we could just be in line. Yes, there is a front to the line and yes, there is a teller up there and yes, you will complete a transaction and leave and no longer be at the bank. But what then? At the crest of every step, are you waiting for a footfall? In the moments before you open the door at your next destination, are you waiting to complete that action? And when you happen to get wherever you’re going, are you just waiting to get somewhere else?

Obviously we don’t think about walking as waiting. We think about it as walking.  For some reason, we criminalize moments of seeming stillness as unproductive or useless. But the truth is, nothing is ever really still.  If Buddhists and yogis (and other smart people) say that everything arises, abides, and dissolves, then we have to acknowledge the incredible expansiveness of “abiding.” We can choose to inhabit our abiding, choose to fill it with breath and intention and contentment. We can choose abiding, instead of waiting.

The jeweler that made my ring only operates on the weekends, so I can’t have it sized until Friday.  I’m excited to wear it, to have it remind me of the man who gave it to me, to let its heaviness carry the weight of three years of abiding, and the promise of many more.

I love you, my darling. Happy Anniversary.