I finished 2017 in a way that was perfect, in light of the year—a midnight glowstick yoga class.
Last night, as I worked my way through various poses, in a room packed with 40+ other people, glowsticks tracing multi-colored lights through the dark, beauty, peace, and positivity reverberated throughout the room and in me. My modifications—knees, forearms, not even trying certain poses, all meant to protect my injured wrist—felt like good choices. Being there also felt like a good choice.
This past year was rough. I’ve spent a lot of time sick or injured. Aside from colds, flus, etc., I started the year with an ankle sprain and ended it with a wrist sprain, this fall I was hospitalized for a week and it was scary, I’ve even fractured ribs! However, despite all of my sickness accomplishments, it was a year filled with *incredible sweetness*. When I look back on the year, it was a good year, full of positive moments I will always treasure and sweet exchanges with people who are dear to me. It was a slower year than most of the last 6 years—in a good way.
I started a new tradition last year, picking a theme for the year and painting it on a canvas. I put the canvas in a place I’ll see it every day. Last year it was a Thoreau quote, “What are we busy about?” The full quote is, “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?” After years of being busy, caught in a nonstop hustle, bustle, I wanted to be more deliberate about where my time was going and what I was building with the way I spent my minutes.
A decent number of my minutes went to recuperating this past year, but I was more mindful about the way I spent my time generally. I wasn’t perfect (I still wasted plenty of minutes :)), and it meant giving up some things and having some lonely moments, but it meant a better quality of life overall and a more deliberate life than I’ve had in years. It meant more quality quiet time with myself. It meant deeper, sweeter, more deliberate, better appreciated moments with friends. It meant learning more about who I am, now. It is too easy to get caught in the ease of “going with the flow” and feeling like we are accomplishing things and “don’t have time”, when, really, we are spinning our wheels at things we haven’t consciously chosen and we’ve given up piloting our lives. I did fewer things this past year, but they were incredibly deliberate, and it feels like I accomplished more that I am proud of and it was a better year than many other years where I’ve felt busy, busy, busy. The slow down was good. The deliberateness was good.
This year, purely by coincidence, my theme is another Thoreau quote, “As near to the edge as I can go.” The full poem is the Fisher’s Boy and the first few stanzas are:
My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean's edge as I can go;
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.
I want to take the deliberateness I practiced this past year and push myself to go further, not just to hold back and let myself be still, but to put myself out there, to push hard and take risks, deliberate ones, but choices where I may dedicate a great deal of time and energy to something and still fail or fall flat on my face, choices where I take real calculated risks to work towards real gains. I want to make sure not to use self-care and moderation as an excuse for not expending myself, not taking risks. Now that I’ve regained a feeling of control over my life, I don’t want to get caught in a different easy current and end up floating along inadvertently, complacent in a different way.
Being still when we need to be, holding back when it will be net positive for us to hold back—that’s a powerful lesson to learn. Not being still when we shouldn’t be, not holding back when it will be net positive for us to push ourselves, even though we might fail—that’s also a powerful lesson to learn. I will be working on that lesson in 2018, trying to find the right balance between stillness and movement, erring on the side of movement this year.
Balance is the ever ephemeral, yet always worthwhile goal. But, I suspect, that is a lesson learned and relearned in pieces, over years… so here's to learning it in pieces!
And, here’s to a 2018 where you make strides towards finding balance, focusing on whatever piece of it you need the most, and making incredible memories and connections along the way.
