Off the Mat Moms: Santosha (Contentment)

“You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers.” -the advertising slogan of RadioShack, a national consumer electronics chain

Oh, how I wish being a parent were only as confusing as buying a new digital camera or hooking up a DVD player to a television.

From that very first copy of What to Expect when you’re Expecting (Heidi Murkoff), to my family doctor’s recommended The Baby and Child Question and Answer Book (Carol Cooper, M.D.), and my all-time favorite, Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child (Marc Weissbluth, M.D.), I’ve been searching for answers to parenting challenges from the day I found out I was pregnant.

Most of the answers I was seeking related to things I desperately wanted to fix. I had extreme sciatica with my first pregnancy, and while my unborn baby had chosen a comfy spot to rest in the womb, I hoped Murkoff would have a solution for the pain. My son didn’t sleep as well as I had expected, so Weissbluth’s helpful guide caught my eye one day while perusing the parenting section at the local library, ironically while this baby slept in my arms and an energetic toddler jumped at my feet. My daughter was shy and didn’t easily leave my side in social situations. I thumbed through Cooper’s book on toddler behavior to see if there was anything I could do to build her confidence.

It’s taken me five years, but after watching two vastly different children make their way through various stages of development, I’ve learned that there are never enough answers for all of those questions.  I can buy out the parenting section at Barnes & Noble and still feel incredibly helpless when those difficult stages arise.

Not only are there never enough answers, but every time an answer is found, a problem is solved, or a situation is “fixed,” there arises another equally or more daunting.  And then, before we know it, our children have grown, and that challenge which seemed so important fades into a mere memory.  Somehow, it never seems as difficult when we are noting it with love in the baby book.

I’ve also learned that parenting brings victories and defeats, ups and down, pluses and minuses.  I was recently overjoyed when my toddler potty trained on his own, far ahead of the schedule I had envisioned.  With that wonderful blessing of saying goodbye to diapers, came his independent spirit who no longer welcomed nap time.

Raising children is made up of an infinite number of moments.   Some moments overwhelm us, and make us doubt our abilities to parent.  Others make us beam with pride and shake our heads at the fact that our kids are growing up before our eyes.  The key is contentment for each passing day, no matter what difficult phase we face, or milestone we celebrate.

In Yoga, contentment is the lesson of Santosha.  Patanjali teaches us to be happy with who we are and what we have in that moment, and reminds us all that it is perhaps not about having all the answers, but about finding peace in the questions themselves.

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