"All is for the best..."

..."In the best of all possible worlds".

D lent me Candide (Voltaire) a while ago and I've just finished it. Bit bizarre to say the least, but brought up some good arguments about optimism and sometimes the absurdity of it, as a way of justifying evil and mishap, and pessimism and loss of hope for the human race.

It got me thinking about how I try to stay optimistic about things but sometimes it can get a bit tiresome and I slip into the pessimistic state, with loss of hope and a good outlook on life. I guess that might be what the book might be trying to achieve, that sometimes even with the best and most optimistic outlook on life, the events which occur can appear quite absurd and how could one possibly remain optimistic in the face of some of the awful trials that face us. However, I think that optimism, pessimism and 'cultivating your garden' (which Candide seems to resign himself to in the end of the book) are cyclical, optimism will lead to pessimism after a while once the trials get to us, pessimism will turn to despair which will lead one a time of quite introspection and 'cultivation' of their own outlook again, which when things start making sense again will lead back to optimism.

Yoga this week consisted of hot yoga on Wednesday, Thursday full primary led and hot yoga again today. I must start writing my blog straight after the class again as I do forget what went well and what did not go so well. Hot yoga went well today, I didn't have to have a 'mini savasana' in the middle like normal even though we had hardcore C teaching. I did some lovely 'dancer' poses and the other standing balances which I normally miss as I'm normally on the floor at this point! I also managed some much better cobras, managed to engage the correct muscles today which lifted my legs higher and weren't such a strain on my lower back, so that was good. Did a two-legged bow and a full camel without hurting my knees. So yeah, it was cool.

Looking forward to my mysore class tomorrow and the new teaching workshop which will go on for an hour before practice. Another hour of yoga per week - yay!