Hula Hoop Happiness

The gentle sway of hips, the subtle rocking back and forth while your gleeful smile blooms and the hula hoop circles. If you’re a master, the revolving hoop abandons your waist to travel a youthful torso toward your shoulders, then slips over arms to orbit your narrow neck.

Maybe “playing hoops” was your thing. Dribble-dribble, shoot-shoot. The hopeful swish of success leading to high fives and cheers as sweating, bodies race down the court.

Adult hoops – peer pressure, personal relationships, employment, and career track… are much less entertaining. We learn to master a new set of skills motivated not for joy, but survival. We contort and compromise as if auditioning for Cirque du Soleil. Our enjoyment fades as we fight to manipulate the spinning form, or maneuver to sink a three point shot.

Burdened with stress and worry, the ball deflates. The simplicity of the spiraling hoop goes wonky, and becomes misshapen. Hitched by challenge and obstacle, the colorful weighted sphere falters. The subtle sway of hip – now arthritic and crotchety – seeks an orthopedic consult and begs for pharmaceutical relief.

Life is a canvas painted with broad stokes from a palette loaded with vivid color. A portrait accented with wicked shades of humor, highlights of happiness, and heart wrenching shadows of grief.

Navigate the hoops which intersect your path to happiness. Finesse a lay-up or grab a mini-tramp and deliver a powerful slam-dunk.

Always be mindful of the colorful plastic at your feet.

Lift the hoops that fire your soul and tickle your childhood joy. Settle them on your wisdom widened hips, where the gentle sway lies dormant.

Your body remembers the rhythm required to sustain the weighted shake-shake.

Hands up!

Chat soon ~ Laura