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Meandering Thoughts

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Photo attributed to Thenix

Photo attributed to Thenix

In this fast paced world, do you ever just have the feeling that you want to sit down, away from the movement, away from the noise, and stare at a blank wall? Not meditation, not yoga, not anything. Just a random human staring at a random wall, letting their thoughts meander as they would, getting some rest from constant sensory stimulation.

Our world is loud, and busy, noisy and needy. It is constantly demanding something of you. It wants to stimulate all your senses, through noise and pictures. It wants you to constantly think about consuming and products. It wants you to be too busy to ask any questions. Although we have the world at our fingertips in our mobile devices, and the internet, sometimes it is good for you to just switch off.

In my routine, sometimes, when the need for it is too overwhelming, I like to put ‘Stare-at-the-CN-tower’ time. I sit down in the quiet, usually early morning, and stare at the CN tower colours. They move up and they move down, undemanding and that’s all I think about. Seems kind of dumb, doesn’t it? Maybe I should check into the nearest mental hospital?

After the constant ringing phone and questions at my work, after the constant thoughts and mindfulness trials, after the jostling of the TTC, the hustling of life, I like the fact that this sitting is undemanding. It asks nothing of you, except to sit. If you are uncomfortable with the idea of meditation because it seems too hokey to you, or you feel you would be ‘bad’ at it, try this instead.

Just sit and let your thoughts meander as they would. Do not try to control them, do not try to stop them, do not pay attention to your breath. Just be. Give yourself permission to do that. Let any guilt over being lazy or unproductive go. You will feel like you are wasting time. If you are unable to stay longer than 5 minutes, then stay 5 minutes. Do it for as long as you want. Or need. Take the time that you need to recalibrate yourself back to zero. And do it as often as you need to.

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Being Truthful with Yourself

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Photo attributed to flickr user NoiseCollusion

For the longest time when I was figuring out my place in the world, I lied to myself internally. I told myself I was happy where I was, when I wasn’t. I told myself I didn’t need to be in a relationship, because I didn’t want to get hurt. I told myself I felt fulfilled when I didn’t.

I have written about ‘Little White Lies’, and how they affect everyone around you. We speak of ethics in yoga, and being ethical towards the people and things around you is a big part of it, but the more important part in my head, is the ethics towards yourself.

Are you taking care of yourself? Are you taking care of your needs? Are you taking care of your dreams, nurturing them, letting them grow, feeding them, and fulfilling them? Are you doing all the things you need to do in order to be the person that you were meant to be? A lot of us, a majority of us, most of us, are not. We are not taking care of ourselves physically and we are definitely not taking care of us spiritually.

Coming back to me, because that’s what this post is about. It is about lies. I didn’t realize it for the longest time, but I did lie to myself. The people around me saw it, even though I covered up my lies with fake smiles, and incessant activity. They saw it, because I seemed to change my mind from day to day about the things I wish to spend my time on, the things I wish to spend my energy on, the things I wish to spend my life on.

One day, I didn’t want to get married, because I didn’t see the value in it. The next day, I spoke about how I would treat my children when I have them.

Thankfully, the people around me, saw through my lies, and they confronted me. My siblings and mother sat me down, one afternoon, in a Tim Horton’s coffee shop, and forced me to confront the hard truth. I’m still not perfect yet. I still lie to myself. I do it all the time. The most important thing though is that I am aware of it now. I see it now, and I have the people around me who will never let me forget that.

Expansion and contraction of your world

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Photo attributed to flickr user Dey

I was thinking about this the other day. When I was younger, much younger, I was always looking to expand my world. My world was very small. I thought only about myself and my family. No one else mattered in the world. We were the five musketeers. The only people who would matter in a disaster would be them. The only people who I wanted alive forever were them. They were my world.

Then I grew up a little and then a lot, and then my world expanded. I became more interested in other people, in world events, in growing myself as a human being. I began caring about other individuals, my friends, family, random people on the street who were hurt, etc. I began expanding my world, my sphere of influence, and my zone of ‘caring’.

I realize now that I have peaked or coming close to my peak of expansion. Despite efforts to grow further, I find the only way I can grow now, is if I travel. Movement to other places, meeting other people, learning how other people on this planet live, despite the Americanization of most cultures, I find I expand inwardly, which is the most important kind of expansion to me.

I also find that as you get older, your friends get married, they have children, and their lives get busy. They are interested in the well-being of their children and nothing else matters. Again, their worlds contract, and they are quite happy about it, but in parallel, if you are not interested in the same, you are unable to stay at the same level as them.

I have spoken to a few of them who are in that stage, married, with children and happy with their lives the way are, happy for their lives to stay the same, as long as their families remain safe and secure. I am happy for them, but it reminds me that I’m not ready for that yet.

We have a long journey ahead of us yet, before we enclose ourselves in the family capsule.

Deep influences of music

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Photo attributed to flickr user Jurvetson

Sometimes I am sitting at work listening to some Psy-Chill from Di.fm. Music just moves me so deep. I just want to dance. I want to be free. I want to move. Restlessness occupies my mind, my brain. Nothing gives me any respite. I just want to go dancing somewhere in the woods far away from everyone else, in my own little spell. In my own little world. That I have created from the pieces that I really want. Being able to pick and choose the good and the better. How to bring more of the influence of music into my life?

Closing my eyes with my headphones on my ears, I let myself absorb the music that seems to surround me. In my mind’s eye, my body dances and sways, moving to the beat that is playing in my head. It might or might not match the music that pours into my ears. Someone looking at me might think I am sleeping, but it doesn’t matter what they think, I’m already in the little world of mine that I have created from the pieces that I like. The good, the better, maybe the best.

Eventually, I’ll wake up from the spell of the music, I’ll stop taping my feet to the beat, the beat that no one else can hear, the beat that plays randomly in my head, when I am waking up or sleeping, or walking to the subway station. Music reminds me of the things that I love in my life, yoga, travel, certain people, sunshine, food. Everything good in the world suddenly comes into my head space. Everything is well and good at the moment. Nothing can harm me now. Nothing can hurt. Music will complete me, until I can find another individual who can take on the same task.

Coming out of the closet

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Photo attributed to flickr user Ethan Hein

I am a private person. I think everyone is. No one likes to be open. To be out in the open with everything they feel, think and do. Everything they want to do with their time and life. Everything that they feel, sexually, emotionally, physically. What they think about in their deepest, darkest moments. You wish to be a closed book, so that people cannot ridicule you. You are safe from the probes of others, because you only let them know what you want them to know. You pretend to be easy-going and open. I do as well, but who really is?

Being private is actually a good thing. You are protecting yourself, your vulnerabilities from the thorns of the world. The world is ready to prick you the minute it feels your weakness. It isn’t a cruelty thing, it is a survival of the fittest thing. It is an evolution thing. It is a real world thing.

Everyone has techniques in order to remain closed, only give out the information that makes them seem cool, a little bit vulnerable, and still keeps them safe. I use the technique of questions. I ask questions, lots and lots of them. I try to always put the spotlight on the other person. They are more interesting. They have more to say than me. It isn’t that I don’t care about them. I do care about what they have to say. But also, I care about not divulging much. I want to be safe.

The more I blog though, and the more I share my blog with people I know, in an attempt to be open, I find that this safety net is tearing slowly. The holes are getting bigger and more of my safety catches are slipping out. The first time someone talked to me about one of my posts, I was embarrassed. I blushed at the thought of them reading my private thoughts. But then they made a comment about something they read. I listened and I learned. It was insightful. I was getting someone else’s perspective on my issues, my life, my demons. I felt the safety net break completely, but I learnt that I didn’t need it anymore. The insights that I would receive from the people who know me, would be far more valuable than being closed off.

Thus, I look forward to more and more content being pulled to pieces by the ones that know me and love me.

Loneliness in the world

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Photo attributed to Thenix

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my parents and how I am responsible in my head and theirs to fend off their loneliness. I was speaking to a friend of mine about this last weekend and I realized that it isn’t just me that is dealing with this issue. Every single one of my friends talks about how his/her parents are lonely, aren’t able to find solace in each other’s company or in their friends, are always looking to their children for help and support. I wondered about this. Why is the level of loneliness on the planet increasing exponentially? The more people that we have on this planet, it seems the more loneliness increases.

Technology definitely seems to contribute to the issue, but what else is making this happen? I really don’t understand. Is that the only reason people are having children so they can have that loneliness safety net? Or is it because people do not know how to be alone with themselves anymore? We are never alone, always surrounded by noise in some form, people, music, TV, and so on. We always looking for something outside of ourselves, when we are unable to find it in our jobs, our education, our money, our whatever, we go looking for it in our children. Who are too busy living their own lives, to be able to do much for us.

I do not have the answer in this post, nor do I really have the answers in general. But seeing all this sadness, this loneliness, really makes me sad. Why do people do this to themselves? We do not realize that we really have very few moments on this planet. Especially the older you get, the fewer the moments, the more the possibility of this moment, being your last one. We really have to savour it, learn to live on our own, and walk away from the loneliness. Choosing to be whatever we want in this moment is the key. You can make yourself feel whatever you want. Choosing contentment over loneliness is the way.

iPhone5 and the environment

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Photo attributed to flickr user moonjazz

I was reading a technology blog post the other day to get ideas for my own company’s blog and I read this article by David Pogue, on the iPhone 5 and his first impressions.

I do not have a smart phone myself. I just have an old LG flip phone, that everyone is surprised to see. I put it on a table at a restaurant, and everyone wants to try it out, to see how they used to live before the smart phones. One thing about the article really caught my eye. It was about the adapter change that iPhone 5 has made. Pogue said:

Still, think of all those charging cables, docks, chargers, car adapters, hotel-room alarm clocks, speakers and accessories—hundreds of millions of gadgets that will no longer fit the iPhone.

And instantly, I was floored. I hadn’t thought about that until he pointed it out. That is so true. All of those millions of gadgets, wires, adapters, etc., will be thrown out, they will be filling up the dumpsters of the world. Maybe some of them will be recycled, some of them will be reused, but most of them are going straight into the garbage. For a major company like Apple, who is supposed to care about the environment, they didn’t think twice about just dumping their old adapter, and going for a new one.

It just seems like such a waste to me. These adapters and their counterparts are going to spend hundreds of years in a wasteyard, because a company didn’t think long-term.

I’m sure it doesn’t matter to them, because being a corporation, they only really care about the sales for this year, but I’m sure we’ll be dealing with the aftereffects of it, for generations to come.

My world is getting smaller

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Photo attributed to flickr user MarilynJane

A quote to begin the post:

From Kathleen Kelly, You’ve Got Mail : Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life – well, valuable, but small – and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around? I don’t really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void.

I had a dream a few nights ago – I am observing an events ceremony, all the prefects of our high school are sitting there, in their new married selves, and clapping and laughing at the spectacle before them. I am not one of them. I had wanted to apply to be a prefect, but that would have meant speaking in public, in a crowd, that I feared greatly when I was a teenager. I regretted later that I didn’t apply, and in the dream, that regret came up. And then came another thought. What happened to all of those brave girls who were our leaders in our high school? All they talk about now are their families and husbands. What happened to them? The dream ends.

I spoke to a friend of mine about this dream – she’s pregnant and in that phase where her baby, her dog and her husband are all that matter in the universe. She doesn’t care about work, or about anything else really. She lamented about the fact, that she feels like she’s getting boring and her world is getting smaller. Then she said, that she feels that she is alright with it. What else matters on this planet besides the living beings in your life?

I loved her thought so much I thought I would share.

This is my happy place

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Photo attributed to flickr user Nagesh Kamath

I was standing in a huge field with a friend of ours, Richard, and there were other people all around us, in costumes roaming around, chatting with friends and strangers-soon-to-be-friends, dancing, drinking, eating, enjoying the sunshine and the music. We were at Harvest Festival, at the end of it, the last hour, the chiming bell, ringing in our heads, we were about to go back to real life. We had a hour of music left, we had an hour before we had to go back to our bills, jobs, and routine daily life.

Richard did a little shimmy and I laughed. He said, “This is my happy place”. It was then I realized that that because I knew that I would be going off on my big trip in 7 months, I didn’t have this feeling of urgency or missing out. I didn’t feel sad that this festival was ending, because I knew there is so much more to come. I didn’t feel panicky when I realized I had to go back to work tomorrow, because I knew there is a lifetime of amazing festivals to come. I knew that there will so much to do, to see, so many more people to meet, that there is no need to panic about today.

The Harvest Festival was absolutely amazing. It is definitely an experience of a lifetime, that once you go to, you are hooked for life. It is a community of like-minded people, who are interested in improving the world, their lives, and the lives of their fellow companions, by living minimally, consuming less, enjoying life’s moments, through music and love, and being a part of a community.

You get a major sense of self-satisfaction, just being around such people, because you realize, yes, there is a lot of bad things happening on this planet, that I do not need to list out, but there are amazing human beings out there, and together, we can make a difference in this world.

IF you haven’t been to Harvest Festival, please take a moment to check out their page, and try to make time next September to go. Thanks.

Contributing to the World

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Photo attributed to flickr user Nagesh Kamath

There is a quote from an article written by my favorite blogger, on Becoming Minimalist which says the following:

“As we chose to no longer live as consumers, we had to identify what other contributions we would be able to offer this world.”

As I spend more and more time paring down my possessions and items in my schedule, I realize that I have a lot of time freed up. All of that time, that I used to spend watching TV, or going shopping, or going to the movies, has been freed up. I didn’t realize how much time I spent in the past on these activities.

I used to spend at least 4-5 hours a day watching TV, and that is on weekdays, not just weekends. I used to spend at least 4-5 hours a week going shopping, at random malls, not because I needed something, just to window shop, in case there was something that caught my eye. I filled my already over-filled closets with a myriad number of items, some of which went to the Salvation Army’s clothing donation box with their tags still on. And I went to the movies with my mother and sister at least once a week. It didn’t matter what we watched really, it was an excuse to get out of the house, it was an excuse to spend ‘unquality’ time together, and it was an excuse to use advantage of the Tuesday movie specials.

Now that I don’t actually spend time doing any of the items above, I am realizing that I have all of this time freed up.

That complaint that I had in the past about not having enough time to volunteer, or not having time to exercise, or not having enough time to do anything, being time-stressed, time-pressed, has been removed. I can no longer complain about time, because I have been given the gift of time, by removing the unnecessary items from my list.

Now the question comes up of how am I going to spend my time. This time that has been gifted to me, is still precious, and needs to spent appropriately. Even if it is just spent on relaxation, or time with friends and family, it has to be spent wisely.

In there somewhere, I need to figure out and am still figuring out, how I am going to give back to the world, to the Earth, to the community, to my country. It doesn’t have to be anything big, just a few hours a month, spent in the pursuit of something bigger than myself is what I am looking for.

How do you contribute to the world?

Who do you hang out with?

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Photo attributed to flickr user rubyblossom

I was speaking to a friend of mine, and she said the following:

If I get this job, it will be a huge lifestyle change. Even my interests will change, because I won’t have all day to be on Facebook and research all my conspiracy crap. I’ll have to wake up at 6, which I never do, and take the train for an hour one way, and work with very cosmopolitan people, and be in one of the most prestigious parts of the city. My wardrobe and attitude will change. Hopefully not in a bad way!

I started thinking about it and I realized that it was true for me as well. When I was working as a server, I spent all day watching TV, doing nothing useful with my time, I worked at night, so I never got a good night’s sleep, I always slept in till late, and I started drinking more than I normally did, I lost a lot of weight because I wasn’t eating properly, missing meals, and eating crap from the restaurant, gulping down food when I ran to the back to grab some other customer’s plates, I spent too much time partying, and not enough time planning, and my conversations were based on what other people did, not anything at a higher level.

When I joined this company, the people here spoke differently, more refined. I had to get up early, go to bed early, I had to dress conservatively, but properly, I had to make sure I was well groomed, I had to speak differently, I had more income and weekends off, so I had more time to spend with friends, and going out to events with family.

It really did matter in my life, who I was hanging out with, and how my attitude changed.

Same thing was with the friends I had in my life. Right now I am hanging out with some people who make much more money than I do, who are a bit more sophisticated in the way they view the world, they care about their appearance, they own homes, they have cottages, they go on vacations, they have dinners at fancy restaurants, and so on. Until I hung out with them, I didn’t realize how my life was different back then. Before them, the only outings I would have are going clubbing, I never went to restaurants much, I hung out with people who lived with their parents, so I didn’t have a space to go to and hang out with friends. We always spent time outdoors. Somewhere outdoors. Mostly they spent time drinking and getting drunk at bars.

My outlook on life and the way I spend my time has completely changed due to the friends that I spend my time with.

What do you think of the observation above?

Parents are teaching their children to be anti-social

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Photo attributed to flickr user Grant MacDonald

I was visiting with T’s friends over the weekend, and they have the two most adorable little children, with one more on the way. I noticed something when we were out on a beach with them. The children weren’t very social with strangers, which might or might not be a good thing when I thought about it further.

I noticed it, and I guess the mother saw me noticing it, because she commented, ‘In this day and age, I prefer to ensure that the children aren’t too trusting’.

Which makes complete sense, and is in my opinion, really, really sad. Of course, I do not want to bring up my childhood because it was a long time ago, in a land far, far away ( the outskirts of Yemen), and it was a different time, where people were generally more trusting of others. But I remember how I used to be out of the house for hours and hours, eating lunches at my friend’s houses, roaming around random beaches and construction sites with my siblings, biking to the far away neighborhoods without a concern for time or place.

I feel like the kind of person that I have become is because of all the experiences that I have had, with my adventures in the unknown, and my love for travel emanates directly from it. I have become a very adjustable, social personality, because of the fact that my mother trusted everyone in the neighborhood, and we were allowed to roam free.

Of course, the mother is being very cautious and smart, because it isn’t safe in this world to be too trusting, especially for young ‘uns, but I just wanted to share the thought of sadness over this occurrence.

What do you think of trust and the world today?

New Yoga Teachers and Getting Paid

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Photo attributed to flickr user marfis75

I was having a conversation with someone recently about why I started doing yoga and why I became a yoga teacher. I said that, “Eventually I wish to become a full-time yoga teacher and that would be a dream come true. Getting paid to teach Yoga, can you imagine?”

They looked at me oddly and said, “Isn’t it un-yogi like to want to get paid for teaching yoga?”

I was stumped for a second. I couldn’t believe this person who obviously lives in the real world, who knows the issues of living in the real world, would actually ask me that question. Then, I realized that this is a problem with almost everyone who does yoga, who teaches yoga and even who just knows of yoga from the outside. Everyone thinks that yogis should give up everything worldly and teach yoga for the sake of teaching yoga, for the pleasure and benefits of yoga, the intangible ones, of course.

I retorted to this individual, “ If I lived in an ashram in India 200 hundred years ago, then that statement would have made sense, but in the 21st century it does not.”

And it truly does not. I am trying very hard to balance my ‘real’ life with my yoga life. I need to pay bills, I have a car and a mortgage that needs to be paid. I have a ‘real’ job and I do the “yoga thing” on the side (like my mother likes to tell her friends). If I am spending precious amounts of my energy and time on driving to a studio and teaching a great class of yoga that benefits the studio and the students, I am absolutely sure that I deserve compensation for that.

I think it would be un-yogi like if you didn’t expect compensation, because then you are not taking care of your needs, and putting your health, time, finances, and energy into jeopardy. You are not taking care of yourself and you are telling the world that your time and energy are not valuable, that you are not valuable as a yoga teacher, and you are dispensable. All of which are un-yogi like in my opinion.

What do you think? Is compensation important for a new yoga teacher to consider or not?

I don’t belong here

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Photo attributed to flickr user rubyblossom

IT is almost the end of June. Yes, I can’t believe it either. It is absolutely insane how quickly time passes by. The clock that never seemed to move when I was a teenager, now seems to move at the speed of light. Every moment passes by without enough appreciation in my opinion. I am just a spectator sometimes. Yesterday, I went over to visit some friends, and while they spoke about things that were important to them, I sat there wondering when I had changed so much and when had they remained just the same. How could I have become this completely different person, and how did they not change at all from our university days? They spoke about purses and getting drunk, just the same as they did five years ago.

I felt so out of place. I was wondering in my head, if there was a parallel universe, where time had stood still, where there is a version of me, that is exactly the same, that doesn’t care about travelling and living a minimalistic life. Maybe there is a version of me, somewhere, who does care about purses and shoes, clothes and makeup, movies and gossip.

I am just in the wrong universe here.

Or, maybe they just haven’t caught up yet. They are still catching up. The world is changing at a rapid pace. I feel every day that the people around me are changing. They seem to be caring about the more important things in life, like family, friends, and dreams. Instead of money and pillaging the environment. The change is definitely in the air. It is coming. I feel it.

Do you ever feel like you don’t belong? How do you deal with that?

Breathing as a gateway between the inner and outer world

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I went to this yoga class on the weekend and the yoga instructor said something really interesting, something that I have been thinking about for a  while now. Your breathe is the most important thing that you can do to stay in the present moment. I find that whenever I get angry or sad, I close myself off. And I can feel that my breathe gets constricted. My chest feels tight, my breathe is uneven, and shallow, and I feel suffocated. The interesting thing is that if I just do some deep breathing exercises, if I just notice my breathes, and make them even and smooth, all of above symptoms disappear.

I also find that my body closes up when I am feeling sad or angry. I hunch over, I am tight, I am protecting myself.

I am making it an exercise now to notice my breathe – notice how I breathe and notice when I stop breathing. Also, when I find that I am not breathing properly – I just start breathing full breaths so that I wouldn’t restrict either the flow of movement and life inside of me.

How do you notice your breathe?

Life is a strange, odd, discombobulated, mess of events

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I have realized one of the reasons I am doing the yoga and meditation. It is so I can get stronger and support the people who are around me. It is so I can be open enough that people can confide in me, when they are feeling pain and need someone.

It is so I can be there in service to the humanity that is around me. Sometimes we lose focus, because we realize we cannot do it all. We cannot be all things to everyone, we cannot change the world, we cannot remove hunger or war from the world. So if we can’t do that, what is the point of us doing anything at all? Right?

Well, those thoughts sometimes do debilitate me because I feel like nothing I am doing is useful, nothing I am doing is resulting in any major change, so why bother? Why bother with anything? I could just live a selfish life in my little pod and work only towards my own meagre happiness.

But we are all here for service to humanity in any shape, or form. It is the only thing that gives any satisfaction to anyone which lasts for a while.

I am realizing more and more that I do not need to go to the other end of the world, to change the world, to do my part.

I can do my bit right here at home, among friends and family, until I am sustainable enough to go out and do it on a larger scale.

All I need to do is listen with an open heart and be there for the people around me. There is so much suffering in everyone around us, a colleague having issues with her husband, a friend separating from a lover, a mother worried about her child, a man worried about the pressure of the world, a father worried about keeping up with the Joneses, a sister worried about a new job.

I have realized I am going to do my own bit by being there for everyone. Even if it is just a ten minute conversation here, a hug there, or a meal cooked anywhere.

How do you plan to do your part today or this month in your own community?

What face do I show

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I was coming out from a yoga class last night at ten p.m. I had had a good, but long day at work. My feet had been dying, they were hurting bad from the pointy shoes that I wear to look good and get more tips. But after the yoga class, it is as if I am transformed after every class. Seriously, it is as if I turn back the clock by going to do some yoga. My whole body feels rejuvenated. My skin feels great. My limbs feel limber. My body feels stronger. I don’t know what I would do without yoga. I also do not know what I did without yoga before. How did I survive? How did I get through the stresses on my mind and body?

I am glad though that I started doing yoga at such an early age. It means to me, that all of the toxic ravages of life and environment haven’t had that much time to accumulate in my body and that’s why I have less to turn back, less to return, less to remove. Little by little, I am moving my body back to the way it was when I was an infant, when I could touch my toes to my face without any effort, and lick my elbows without a problem. I am extremely content and happy every time I come out from a yoga class. It is hard to get there, after I have been sitting on a couch for a few minutes. Getting up from that comfortable, warm couch is hard. But as soon as I get to the mat, I feel like I have come home. My body instantly relaxes. All the tight muscles fade. My face relaxes, my mind calms down, my thoughts slow down, my pleasure centers fire up.

I came out of class yesterday and I do not remember what I was thinking of, but the owner of the studio pulled me aside, and asked me, Is everything alright? You look like something is bothering you.

I was stumped. Is that the face that I present to the world? Is that what the world sees when they see me, grumpy and occupied with thoughts? Even when I am happy as a bug? I replied in the negative and left with a smile, to reassure the guy, but in my car and on the drive home, I was wondering what people saw when they saw me.

Do they see a happy-go-lucky, optimistic person who’s looking to make a mark on this planet by her writing? I have to ensure that I keep myself in check when I am walking around, because even though on the inside I might be smiling, I might look forbidding to the people around me. That is not something that I wish to do.