A Right-Sized Life

You come alone.

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound and six, result misery.” Charles Dickinson from David Copperfield

My husband and I have often quoted this to our children. A clear and readily understandable example of what happens when we overstep our limits.

It occurs to me that this could also be a template to describe life when we blow past our energy limits. Part of being a Forest Dweller for me has been reviewing, digesting and completing the years of ignoring and overstepping my intuitive energy levels, much to the detriment of my physical and mental health.

Initially when I found myself at this stage of my life, I was thinking it would just be a version of what I had done in my Householder years, one might say a form of Householder-Lite. Social obligations, but doing a little less. Going to yoga once/week instead of twice. Cooking a few more gourmet meals. Less jogging, more walking. Etc.

What I did not expect was a complete upending of what I am called to do. It turns out I have a huge, overwhelming, solar plexus grabbing desire to Be.

I loved the part of Covid which gave me an irrefutable, automatic excuse to stay home. One of my fondest memories of that time was sitting at my desk watching the rain fall on my garden with no place to go and nothing I had to do.

On one of my visits to India, I traveled with my husband looking for a seldom visited temple dedicated to Neem Keroli. (For those of you who don’t know of him, Neem Keroli was a well-known and loved Indian teacher.) My husband Norm had spent a few years with Neem Keroli in his 20s and wanted to visit the temple pujari (priest) whom he had known at that time. It was late and starting to get dark. We were in the Himalayan foothills, mists were moving in and our driver, who was from the plains, clearly wanted to head for the hotel. We persevered, Norm with a pounding headache and all of us mildly (or me quite) irritated . Finally we came to a small temple which was obviously abandoned with a huge chain across the gate. Ok then, back to the hotel, great! But no, Norm was certain he was there. Knocking and finally rattling the chain loudly, rousting an unhelpful groundskeeper. ‘No, go away, the pujari is napping.” Norm- “Wake him up!”

Before we knew it, the pujari was sitting us down around his fire and we were being served chai. He then told the story I didn’t know I needed to hear. When he was in college he had invited a few of his friends to see Neem Keroli and share the incredible gift this teacher was to him. When they didn’t come, he was disappointed. Neem Keroli had never met these friends nor known their names. Yet he said to the pujari, “Don’t worry about Gopal and Delip not coming to see me. When you come to Me, you come alone.”

In the upending and shedding happening in these Forest Dweller years, I often think of this advice.

Let’s get back to having a right-sized life. There is no template for this. It is an inner, not an outer adventure, and can be very disorienting! It’s yours alone to navigate.

I’m curious what you see a right-sized life looking like for you. Perhaps another way to speak about this is dharma. I like the definition of dharma as being totally in the flow of the river of life, not fighting the current.

And from the Bhagavad Gita “Better your own dharma done poorly than another’s done well.”

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