Flat Tires and Sprained Ankles

"If you have a flat tire, that is also part of the journey."
-CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

Is it too late to wish y'all a Happy New Year?! I've been writing this message for two weeks now, but the musings kept morphin' as life came at me fast on the dawn of this New Year.

I finally finish today laid up with a freshly sprained ankle that looks like it was left in the proving drawer a bit too long—an all too familiar feeling from my competitive basketball days—and definitely not how I expected to spend this first bit of 2026.

 It did help me hone in on what I've been trying to say (silver lining, eh?).

As my thoughts oscillate between immense gratitude that the whole accident wasn’t much worse and anxiety-ridden noise “How am I going to care for 2 young boys and 2 big dogs all while living in a 3rd floor apartment of a building without an elevator?” my practice reminds me to STOP the spiral and abide by my go-to mantra.

A flat tire (or in this case, a sprained ankle) is also part of the journey…

An eternal optimist and lover of beginnings, I am all about New Years energy. Greetings of hope fill every exchange as strangers pass one another on sidewalks and street corners, an all too rare occurrence these days.

It seems we start each year, well... hopeful. Hopeful this year will be the best one yet or the one we finally [fill in the blank].

And while I love it and want to believe it, I can't help but wonder if hopefulness is misleading. When we hope for {x}, we inherently tie ourselves to an expectation, a specific unfolding of how we want life to be. Is hope then shattered when life doesn't live up to our vision? Could hope be a root cause of disappointment?

Today's message is not one of jadedness or realism; instead it is one of contentment or what the yogis would call Santosha. 

These next 365, er 350, days are ones of mystery. Some of us with experience incredible agony while others immense bliss. All of us will have days that are full and busy and others mundane and boring; there will be days we feel light and others we feel heavy. The list goes on: restless, eager, motivated, disappointed... I guess the one thing we can be certain of is this coming year will play out moment to moment with a variety of experiences all begging to be paid attention to.

All of this reminds me of my very favorite passage from Pema Chödrön that changed my life when I heard it back in 2016 (officially a decade now!). 

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

So perhaps we can still remain hopeful rather than throwing this feel-good energy out entirely. When we alter our approach to hope and detach it from a desired outcome, all of life becomes an experience to create space for.

This year my hope is that I commit to the process of becoming rather than striving for an ending; that I remove the blinders of how I believe life should play out and open up to possibilities of what may come; and that I embrace the ride of life—with evenness of temper—rather show up with the energy of resistance or avoidance.

And I hope that we here at YoYo can be your sanctuary to truly immerse yourself in all that may come in your 2026. 

Mad Love YoYos and Happy New Year!

K