That looking back thing you do

Here at the swel­ter­ing end of the globe (cur­rently around 40° and fore­cast to hit 42° Celsius – that’s 107.6° F for you north­ern­ers) it’s New Year’s Eve and time to glance back and eval­u­ate. A few years ago, I was pretty miser­able. I made up for it by making public posts about polit­ics and intel­lec­tual pur­suits and private posts about struggles I was having with the inter­face between me and the world. I saw friends happy and didn’t know how to pro­cess that. And then at other times, I was really happy, mostly when there was food and music, like at Woodford.

I’m hes­it­ant to talk about hap­pi­ness now because I’m aware that there are people out there exper­i­en­cing their own grief and fear and other chal­lenges, and I remem­ber what that felt like. To them I want to say: this too shall pass.

A few years ago, 

crystal_storm

and I star­ted a tra­di­tion of choos­ing a word for each new year instead of doing resolutions. 

razorgirl_au

joined in and I now know that 

e_dan

is doing it too. I just saw on 

art­broken

‘s journal that he’s look­ing for Clar­ity and Momentum this year. I’ve sought Clar­ity before and it was a year of insights and won­ders. My word year before last was Heal — phys­ical, mental and spir­itual heal­ing — and I mended my broken back, embarked on a psy­cho­lo­gical jour­ney and changed my ritual prac­tices that year. 

The word for this year was Replen­ish. I’m not sure how that worked but I guess it did. People keep on telling me how happy I look. It was a crazy year. A year in which I moved to Amer­ica and then back again. A year in which I had not one but two wed­ding cere­mon­ies, both to the same man (only one legal, of course, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the fact it was legal rather than just a hand­fast­ing). We learned a little about par­ent­ing a teen­ager, suc­ceeded from time to time and failed fre­quently. We had happy times and tumul­tu­ous times. We cried in each others’ arms a lot. We saw a couples ther­ap­ist and worked through a huge amount. I could­n’t find a job and scraped by with occa­sional freel­ance work and Doug’s gen­er­os­ity. It was a very hard year in that sense. And it was magical: new friends, Burn­ing Man, roadtrips, Peru, red­woods in the Santa Cruz moun­tains, Harbin Hot­s­prings. Inter­est­ingly, for a year with the aim of replen­ish­ment, both our cere­mon­ies included a ritual of filling each oth­er’s cup with mead. Honey, thank you for help­ing me to fill our cup.

I’ve been trying to work out this year’s word. Usu­ally I’m at Wood­ford now, but I did Burn­ing Man instead and moving coun­tries is expens­ive! I think it might just be Grace (spe­cific­ally in the sense of ‘accept with grace’). I think this year has chal­lenges in it that I will need to flow with and I think that learn­ing to embrace and accept those chal­lenges with grace would be a lesson that would enrich me and endow me with great power for the future when I want to change and create. I’m also look­ing for the ‘cour­teous good­will’ and the charm and eleg­ance it implies: I’d love to refine my harsher edges and become more gently per­suas­ive in my argu­ments. I can’t often hear the tones that people hear in my voice and react against but I’d like to learn to soften them.

So, there you have it. A far-too-public airing of my life as it stands, but one that feels right for now.  I’d love to hear what con­cepts you would choose to bring into your lives, if you’d care to share. I wish you all the bright­est of bless­ings for the New Year.