Re-create Tomorrow

“Am I really doing this?”

Shae sat on the edge of her bed. Her eyes trailed the curtains down the wall. She couldn’t believe the mental shift that happened within herself over the course of the evening.

Just three hours ago, she felt annoyed and full of dread. She regretted volunteering to substitute teach two yoga classes the next day, on Halloween. The regret wasn’t so much about the commitment to teach as it was the potential judgment from people about whether she did or didn’t dress up in a costume.

The yoga studio where Shae taught was doing a special raffle that students could enter by wearing a costume to their yoga class on Halloween.

“I can’t be the Halloween grinch,” she thought. The last thing she wanted to be was the boring teacher who didn’t participate.

She dug around every corner of the house looking for the tutu she wore on her 32nd birthday. A ballerina would be an easy costume. She could just throw on the tutu over her leggings, and her tank top would look like the leotard. She kept glancing at the time, perplexed at her own determination. Her 4:30am alarm was weighing in the back of her mind.

She had no luck finding the tutu. She gave up and collapsed on the couch with a cold piece of pizza.

“Nobody’s going to dress up for the 6am class anyway.” She attempted to reassure herself.

She looked up from the last bite of pizza and admired her favorite apron hanging on the far wall of the kitchen. It was a gift from her mom honoring their lineage. She loved the colors and the Swedish horses on it.

That was the spark she needed. Her mind was still halfway in the costume conundrum while the cold pepperoni made her consider becoming a vegetarian.

“I could wear that apron over my yoga clothes,” she thought to herself.

Then suddenly, she remembered her friend John randomly gave her a chef’s hat a while back. It stemmed from an inside joke between them.

She ran upstairs to see if the hat was still folded in one of her catch-all drawers.

The memory of opening the package from John flashed across her mind. John lived in another state. The gifted hat was his response to the macaroons she baked and mailed him a few weeks prior. He raved about them. He claimed they didn’t even last 24 hours from the time he opened them and took the first bite. He started calling her pâtissière. The day she got a package from him in return, she let out a belly laugh as she pulled the white pastry chef’s hat from the paper wrapping. It was perfectly clever. She took a picture of the hat on top of the opened box and texted it to John. “Good one,” the text read. She set her phone back down, still smiling and shaking her head. What the heck she was ever going to do with a hat like that? Into the catch-all drawer it went.

That was eight months ago.

John passed away two months ago. Shae was happy and deeply sad to find the hat in the drawer where she left it. She could feel his spirit close again in that moment. Although not physically, he was there, as close as the air. She could feel the big satisfied grin on his face. His cleverness continued, and it was brilliant, and he knew it. Her laughter broke through the tears as she found herself in a situation that actually called for the ridiculous chef’s hat.

She brought the hat downstairs and put it in the pocket of the apron hanging on the wall. Another idea brought her to the utensil drawer where she pulled out a whisk. She stood in the middle of the kitchen imagining herself at the front of her yoga class. She waved the whisk around like a magic wand.

“Voila,” she said in a soft voice, feeling satisfied with her simple costume. She was pleasantly surprised that it meant something special to her.

“Am I seriously about to teach yoga in an apron and a chef’s hat?” Shae giggled to herself.

She started to feel like the cartoon grinch character when his heart starts rapidly growing. She felt some sort of strange transformation happening. Normally, she would be suffering the Monday night scaries before her Tuesday 6am class, but they were nowhere to be found. Her costume worries completely dissolved. She felt lighter. She didn’t abandon herself to find a Halloween costume. She just followed her heart around the house until it came together.

That night, as Shae laid down to bed and closed her eyes, it all flashed before her. She was living a dream come true teaching yoga. Just one year ago, this was not something she even thought possible. It sunk in that people were signed up for her class in the morning. She felt compelled to give them her whole heart. Or maybe it wasn’t so much about them as it was her own growing heart. Through Yoga, she had been learning the concept of witnessing thoughts without becoming attached to them. From her pillow, she traced back and observed her thoughts from earlier. She noticed how they were initially trailing toward the negative grinch place. It was the same ole negative thinking spiral to somewhere less fun than the alternative: the chute dropping down to the heart. Her heart wanted to be a part of the fun tomorrow.

Shae fell sleep a little easier after re-creating the next morning into something she could look forward to. She felt like a kid again, excited to be a pastry chef yoga instructor for Halloween.

As she dozed off, a little whisper came through her exhale: “Thank you, John.”

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Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

Okay, hi everyone, did you enjoy this story? : ) I had fun writing it. I want to keep the fun going and conduct a little poll with you all.

I will share the results of the poll as well as the correct answer on Wednesday.

*GASP* - yes, that’s right, another Seeing Upside Down offering could be coming your way, smack dab in the middle of the week. I have only ever sent posts out on Sundays with one or two Mondays sprinkled in there.

After much thought, I have also decided turn on the paid subscription option for my Substack. From the start, I have always said I would give it at least one year before providing the option for readers to upgrade to paid. I wanted to see this through, much like many of you, I imagine. And now we’re here. Thank you for being on this journey with me. You each retain the option to remain a free subscriber, and you will continue to receive my Sunday offerings. Any bonus posts, like the one coming this Wednesday, will be for paying subscribers only. Aside from any incentives, which will evolve over time, your potential decision to upgrade to paid more importantly represents the sacred act of believing in something. It is something I am creating. That means you believe in me too. Thank you. Going to paid not only means you believe; you also actively support it. Together, we have been able to witness something very special take shape here in Seeing Upside Down. I only foresee it getting better and better.

Okay, hug, hug, kiss, kiss, thank you for considering that! The button to upgrade, if you so choose, will be at the bottom of this post, under the linked song, which is the song that plays at the end of my voiceover. And yes, if you didn’t know, I record my own voiceovers. You can click to listen at the top of the post.

Now, let’s get to this poll about the opening story! Take your best shot. I will share the results and winning answer on Wednesday.

There is a chance I will do one of three things:

a) continue writing that story

b) expand on it through reflection and analysis in the usual format of Seeing Upside Down

c) both a) and b)

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Alright, dear reader, how does your week ahead look? How are you feeling about it? Maybe you feel good, and you wouldn’t change a thing. I raise my cup of coffee to you. Maybe you’re neutral. Or a tilt the other way- maybe you just feel ‘meh.’ Or worse, maybe you feel like Shae at the beginning of the story. Annoyed? Dreading something? I know the feeling.

Recall how Shae gave up her search for the tutu. She gave up watching the clock. She surrendered to a piece of cold pizza. She admired her favorite apron on the wall.

Although by collapse onto the couch, she entered the present moment.

From that moment forward, her tomorrow was reborn.

Doesn’t it make you wonder how much is right in front of you, which could transform an undesirable situation, if you really wanted it to?

Honestly, I’m down to try it this week. Let me know if you try and how it goes.

It feels like time travel or something.

Do we believe it?

Can we re-create tomorrow? I suppose it would only be a re-creation if we already formed it to be something else in our minds. Otherwise, I suppose it’s more like a co-creation… a choice to partner with something (someone?) bigger than our fear of tomorrow. By doing that, we allow a better scenario to unfold. By doing that, we choose what our heart actually wants, rather than avoiding it to safeguard ourselves from that which we fear.

Okay, hey now, I wasn’t supposed to start unpacking the Shae story yet.

Consider it your extra sprinkle of fairy dust.

Now, go do something cool with your magic self.

with love, Jeannie Lynn