Start Your Week by Being

           On Sunday, as I was helping my son pack to return to camp, he asked me if I could write up a few things to do with the campers to create a community and (hopefully) use that sense of community to encourage both better behavior and more fun.  Over the years I have done a lot of substitute teaching, working with the children at church and have taught yoga at daycare.  This means I have a lot of resources for community building games that are fun, but don't require any "stuff," just a sense of adventure and a bit of leadership.  One of the things I pulled out was my Yoga Pretzels (Yoga Cards).  This has been a lifesaver on many occasions. The authors and I have very similar styles, mixing education with fun and down right silliness.
           Taking some ideas from the cards and others from experience, I wrote up a one page team building blueprint.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I was both happy and sad that I wouldn't be the one doing these things.  When I returned from dropping him off at camp and began to clean up, this is what I found on the bottom of one of the yoga cards.

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."

                                        - Joseph Campbell
           I can't imagine a better way to organize my week.  Concentrate a bit more on being and a bit less on doing.
 


     A little addendum....  I wrote this post just before my run, but waited to publish so that I could review it.  While I was running (or to an outside observer, staggering), I had an experience that I have not had since leaving Italy in 1996.
           One thing I loved about living in Europe is that European men have a way of letting you know that you are appreciated as a woman without being threatening or suggestive.  It was a nice feeling.  There was this one Greek waiter in Pippo Pappo's restaurant in Aci Trezza, Sicily who flirted outrageously with me the entire time I was pregnant with my first son.
          Back to today, I ran by some men who were fixing the sidewalk. One of them, without ever taking his eyes off my face, let me know that I was a beautiful woman.  For a short, rounded, 45 year old woman, it was unexpected and oh-so-nice.  It takes so little to make someone's day, I hope to pass the gift on to everyone I meet (the feeling, not the noticing them as a woman, I'll leave that one to the guys...).