The Daily Yogi

By Mackenzie Kyryluk The absurdity of life is at times lost on me. I wake up, day after day, to a new opportunity, yet the same. Each living soul around this world is given the same time each day. We are defined and constricted to the sense of time our ancestors have bequeathed us. On the other side of the flowing river of time, we are each given an equitable allocation of this undefinable resource. What is time? Imagine you're given the task of explaining this concept to someone with no prior knowledge. “ One second is saying Mississippi out loud, a minute is 60 of those, and an hour another 60 of those, but in a day there are 24 hours, that makes a day, and in a year there are 365 of those, but every four years there are 366. ” Yes, it follows the angle at which the sun moves around the Earth and the time it takes for the Earth to make one full rotation around the Sun. Is it not also a wonder that within that time it takes for the earth to make its ‘full year’ journey, it also sp...

By Jayden Kyryluk   Access Theory: How fear, experience, and confidence form a self-reinforcing cycle of human growth.   UNKNOWN → EXPERIENCE → ACCESS Access is the freedom that follows familiarity. It's the ability to act, move, or connect without fear, after transforming what was once unknown into lived experience. Life is about experience, but you begin it with nothing. Every new experience, however, brings the freedom to do what was once the unknown again without fear. New experiences bring access to the fruits of it. Meeting a new friend, a once unknown person, in a different city gives access to that city and person. Going to a new school is a leap into the unknown. A student learns from the experience, then ultimately gains access to the fruits of it, such as a job only accessible from the obtained degree, friends met along the way, or the independence of living on their own for the first time. Without undertaking the experience of school, its fruits would never have be...

By Jayden Kyryluk  You can’t wait for things to be perfect before you start living your life. That dream of “things aligning” before doing what you really want is a distant desire of the same ilk as that new car you want. If you want that car, you have to start saving for it. It won't just come to you. Life doesn’t pause for anyone; it doesn’t wait. It continues to flow, and it is up to you to move with that flow or watch it go by.  Waiting is a fool's game. As you sit there watching others live their lives, you may wish it was you. You may wish you had their opportunities or life experiences. Life will not come to you. You have to grab it. If you want something, you have to stand up, right now, and take that first step. You want to write a book? Write the first word. You want to run a marathon? Put your shoes on, and go for a run. You want to learn a new language? Start studying. These things do not magically happen. A first step must be taken, a spark that electrifies everyt...

By Taegan F The missed connections. The intense short lived burning passion. I’m not talking just about a romance with someone foreign with a different mother tongue, or the lingering eye contact you make with someone across a cafe as you have your daily croissant; as the eyes are the only way you can really communicate anyways. I mean the aching desire and longing love for olives that your motherland can’t even dare to replicate, the engulfing admiration for architecture that you pass by with every little step and grieve as you go to the next street, the next city, and the next country. I mean the playfulness of using a broken language with someone who laughs at your ignorance, the way the stars are slightly shifted in the sky, the grass that really is greener on the other side, the richness of an orange and the way its aroma bursts into the air, dosing you in its perfume as it fills your tummy. I mean all the knick’s and knacks you couldn’t justify buying but will always remain fond ...

By Jayden Kyryluk   Prepare for everything, most importantly the unexpected. Devastation—that feeling that we’re absolutely crushed and shocked by an event—is a factor of how unlikely we considered that event in the first place. So expect the unexpected. As Seneca said, “fortune falls heavily on those for whom she’s unexpected. The one always on the lookout easily endures.”

By Jayden Kyryluk Life unfolds in chapters. One begins, ends, and leads into the next. Each chapter carries its own character, its own lessons. Some filled with loss, others with joy, but all part of one story. Each chapter offers its own opportunity. Whether in loss or gain, it always leads to the next. As children, we could sense when a new chapter began: the first steps, the first words, the first day of school. High school became a chapter, then university, each flowing naturally into the next. But as we grow older, the transitions blur. The pages stretch out. Change no longer arrives with clear moments of transformation; change slips quietly into our lives, almost unnoticed.  We become so absorbed in the flow of life that we forget to look up and notice we’ve turned the page. We lose sight of the fact that each chapter leads to another. We get lost in the words. The chapters get longer and longer and the big swings from one chapter to the next lose their i...