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Someone stole my yoga mat.
Late the night before, I’d parked my Jeep outside my apartment after yoga class. The moment I turned off the ignition, I reached for my phone and texted someone to look at the moon. I continued texting while laughing and heading upstairs. It wasn’t until the next morning when I got up and glanced at the space along the hallway where I always place my mat that I registered its absence. Maybe it sounds strange, but in that moment, I knew it was gone.
Well, I knew that I had let myself become distracted and left it on the front passenger side floor. That I locked the doors but left rear windows open. That the parking space backed onto an alley where there are no lights late at night. That there was foot traffic in that alley and how my neighbors always cautioned me to be careful out back alone at night. And yet, I’d left it anyways.
In the 45 or so seconds it took me to slowly and begrudgingly make my way to my parking space to confirm, I cycled from self-blame, to indignance, to outrage, and back to self-blame as I imagined someone breaking into my Jeep and recklessly taking what belonged to me.
I told myself it was only a mat and that it could be replaced. I reminded myself of so many Sanskrit terms and yogic principles that relate to the situation. Namely, non-attachment. Clearly I have more work to do on myself as these barely registered through the wave of emotions.
Then, in the instant that I saw my mat had actually disappeared, I felt something else entirely.
Relief.
To be clear, my relief was not selfless. It was not an angelic relief that someone had a cushier place to sleep that night or had something they could pawn at the shop across the street. It was not a charitable belief that one of the individuals who regularly created drama simply had a bad night. I was not so gracious. My relief was exclusively for myself.
In recent years, I had catharted on that mat. Cried on that mat. Arm balanced on that mat. Learned to be still on that mat. Gotten angry on that mat. Pleaded with whatever gods or spirits that may or may not exist on that mat. Confronted more than I’d wanted to on that mat. Using that rectangle as my vessel, I had remembered who I was through so many past versions of myself, versions I no longer needed.
The person I held in contempt had taken my mat but also a lot of heavy emotions I had still been lugging around. Well, the everyday physical reminder of them, but it felt sort of the same.
I’m not the only person whose yoga mat has been stolen. Many others in the same situation have described an understandable feeling of melancholy afterward. Some say they were forced to confront an emotional attachment they never knew they’d had. Although given the intensity of my relief, I had to ask myself if my attachment was to more than the mat. Maybe the emotions we each experience when we lose a mat that’s accompanied us through eras of our life isn’t about losing the mat. It’s about losing a part of our story.
I’m still working through my other attachment—the last of my resentment toward whoever stole it. But they say karma’s a bitch, so as emotionally loaded as that mat was, to the person who has it, good luck.
