The Plumber’s Leaky Pipes
Watching Sarah begin another school year has had me thinking about what it costs to care deeply.
She has been teaching for a long time, but experience does not make every new year predictable. Each year brings new children, new needs, and new challenges.
This year seems to have asked more of her.
What I see is someone who cares so deeply that even after a difficult day, she continues looking for a way inward to the children she teaches.
There is no child she is willing to write off.
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Years ago, I worked in concrete construction—if you can believe it.
And I was sixteen years old.
I would get up before dawn, pick up the work truck, tow a big tractor behind me, and be ready to pour concrete by six in the morning.
There was no slowing down once the mud hit the ground. You worked until the job was finished.
I loved watching an ordinary piece of dirt become a beautiful walkway—or the foundation of a house.
By the time I got home, I would be exhausted. I’d take a short nap and then go about the rest of my day.
At sixteen, there seemed to be an infinite supply of energy available to me.
Especially if I got my afternoon nap.
One day, after a long, hot shift, I returned the truck and equipment to my boss’s property near Lake Mathews.
He had a gorgeous place—isolated, but still close enough to town—with a large yard where we stored all of our construction equipment.
That afternoon, he invited me to hang around and relax by the pool.
He even let me stay on the clock.
Bonus!
As we sat beside the pool in his beautiful backyard, I began looking around.
The concrete work was less than stellar.
Some of it was cracked. Some was unfinished. The textures were rough, and tree roots had pushed portions of the walkways out of place.
It looked nothing like the work we were doing for other people day after day.
Apparently, I wasn’t very good at hiding my surprise.
My boss noticed the look on my face and simply said:
“A plumber’s house always has leaky pipes.”
And isn’t that the truth?
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We expend so much of ourselves out in the world.
Often for honorable reasons.
To earn a living.
To build a business.
To become skilled at what we do.
To earn a reputation as someone who can be counted on.
To care for people well.
And then we come home and discover that we have very little left for the leaks waiting there.
Sometimes the very skills and gifts we so readily offer to others become difficult to access in our own homes, our own relationships, and even within ourselves.
I have seen this many times in my own life.
You should see the network cabling in my house.
Spaghetti doesn’t even begin to describe it!
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The more I studied Yoga Therapy, meditation, and the nervous system, the more I shared those tools with others.
But there were still days when I would come home just as anxious as the people I had been teaching.
I wanted to vegetate on the couch.
I wanted to eat something that wasn’t particularly healthy.
I wanted to disengage from everything and everyone.
Knowing how to regulate myself did not mean I was always regulated.
Teaching other people how to find their way inward did not mean that my own pathway never became difficult to find.
It did not mean that I was a fraud.
It meant that I was human.
I’m only human, flesh and blood, born to make mistakes…
You’re welcome. That one will be with you all day.
I had spent the day offering my skills and energy to others without leaving enough in the tank for the journey home.
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Trying to find balance is one of our ultimate purposes.
Balance between doing for others and doing for ourselves.
Over the last several years, I have begun asking a different question:
What might happen if I paid more attention to the environment within my home, my family, my relationships, and myself?
Would that change the way I approached my work and my business?
Would it change how I responded to the noise of economics, politics, religion, and everything else happening in the world around me?
Could I create a smooth concrete walkway leading back to myself?
A path I could cross without slipping when life became wet.
One I could follow without tripping when things became dark.
And when I invited the people I love inside, could there be a clear path leading them to the doorway?
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There is an old saying:
Doctor, heal thyself.
I used to laugh at that when I was a kid because I spent a lot of time in and out of doctors’ offices.
Broken arms.
Broken fingers.
And then there was the knuckle on my right middle finger.
The doctor carefully wrapped my hand in a cast that left me permanently “flipping the bird,” as my mom liked to say.
For the next six weeks, whenever my teacher asked the class if anyone knew the answer, I inevitably raised my hand.
You can imagine how that looked.
Finally, my very patient teacher—and I have a long history of patient teachers in my life—said:
“Danny, I know you don’t know the answer. Put your hand down.”
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In Yoga Therapy, we talk about regulation—the state of our nervous system and our ability to notice what is happening within us.
When we are with other people, we also experience something called co-regulation.
What is present in one person can be felt—and sometimes shared—by another.
We have all experienced this.
Maybe we have a friend who arrives with a lot of anxiety or worry. They jump rapidly from one subject to another, and as much as we may love and adore them, we can feel exhausted afterward.
We begin to take on some of their speed.
There is no judgment in that.
It is simply something nervous systems do.
The more honestly I assess what I am feeling in a given moment—and the more willing I am to look at myself, leaky pipes and all—the more steadiness I can bring into the room.
That steadiness has a certain gravitas.
A gravity that others can feel.
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For me, this is not theoretical.
It is practical.
When I spend time in reflection, gratitude, and honest self-assessment, I show up differently around my family.
Not perfectly.
But more available.
I see Ceci finding her own gravity—even when she is flying through the sky.
It is wonderful to witness someone so grounded and yet so willing to take chances.
I see it in Sarah, whose playfulness can turn an ordinary moment into something we are both laughing about.
She reminds me that co-regulation is not always solemn.
Sometimes it looks like laughter.
Sometimes she steadies me.
Sometimes I steady her.
And I see it in myself when I become discouraged, easily triggered, or pulled off balance.
Those moments do not mean I have failed.
They are signals.
My pipes are leaking.
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Recently, Sarah told me about a meaningful conversation she had with a parent.
A child had been having a difficult time, and together they began looking for new ways to offer support.
What stayed with me was not the difficulty itself.
It was the willingness of two caring adults to pause, listen, and try another way.
There was no blame.
No one was being written off.
Just two people looking for another way in.
It reminded me that experience, love, and good intentions do not make any of us immune from difficult seasons.
They simply give us more tools—and perhaps a little more humility—with which to begin again.
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When my life begins to feel a little unmanageable, I know where I need to look.
Inward.
Not with judgment.
Not because there is something wrong with me.
But to notice where my energy may be leaking.
To see where the pathway home has become obscured.
To ask whether I have left anything for myself and the people I love.
I do not have to repair everything at once.
Sometimes the first step is simply being willing to notice.
For now…
Time to go check on my pipes.
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ROAR with Love,
Danny
The Emotional Driver
“Emotion Is the Note. You Are the Song.”
