Do you remember at the beginning of the pandemic there were all the jokes about the line “I hope this email finds you well.” And let’s face it, for the last couple of years, we haven’t been well, or at least not all the time, and certainly not in all the ways one would wish to be well. What even is wellness now? I don’t want any easy and pat wellness advice myself because this stuff is hard and recurring and complicated and we can be more than one thing at once, anyway. One thing I do know, is that what we normally think of as wellness is not this steady stream. Sure we can be resilient but we also get to take breaks from being resilient. (Which is perhaps a form of resiliency). So what I hope for you in this coming year is that you find your way to a wellness, and in the times when things are more crumbly, you find ways to return and return to a space where you feel okay and sometimes even content and happy.

My holiday post on Instagram, I think, was a nod to the fact that not everything has been or needs to be perfect. I can’t stop thinking though about how there are simultaneously so many pandemics happening at once. If you’re a health care professional, you’re in what I imagine is the most intense and gruelling and heartbreaking time of your life. I can’t honestly imagine (and I have a pretty good imagination) how it must feel to pour everything you have and are into your work and then to have a portion of the population fight your expertise with their disinformation and lame rhetoric. And then if you work from home, that’s another kind of pandemic. If you have small children, there’s that difficulty and challenge. And if you work in customer service, yet another, and so on etc.

I’d love to write a New Year’s post with no mention of the pandemic, but that wouldn’t be real would it? However I really really want to keep things positive! So, I’m going to talk about how I plan to keep my sh*t together (to use the poetic term) in the upcoming year.

And I’m going to start off by thinking about the “fighting optimism” of my man Bruce Springsteen. (He used the phrase in his interview with Stephen Colbert). Maybe we need to have a fighting wellness, too. I like the phrase a lot, because it indicates that this is going to be a hard-won state of being. Optimism is tough, man, it’s tricky and it’s hard to hold onto. People will try to wrestle it away from you just because. And so you fight for it.

If you read my book, The Flower Can Always Be Changing, you might remember the last couple of pieces in it nodded to Jenny Holzer. I’ve long been enamoured with her work, and the first piece that I saw of hers was the one below, where the phrase “It is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender” was installed on a movie theatre marquee. I know that most editors are in general going to steer writers away from the word “very” but in this case I think it’s beautiful. Because it’s not enough to be tender, you need to be very tender. Very. Tender.

Be tender with yourself, with others. You know, try a little tenderness, as the great Otis Redding sang. Maybe doing this can be a form of resistance.

In a previous post giving advice to writers, I talked about contingency.

As I said, the thinking in Stephen Batchelor’s book, Living with the Devil, around the phrase “if not this, then that” — has helped me a lot. Batchelor talks about contingency: “whatever is contingent depends on something else for its existence. As such, it need not have happened. For had one of those conditions failed to materialize, something else would have occurred. We make 'contingency' plans because life is full of surprises, and no matter how careful our preparations, things often do not turn out as anticipated.”

If I were to pick a word for the upcoming year, it would probably have to be contingency. Because we already know that we can plan all we like, but we will need contingency plans for our contingency plans. And that’s fine, really. We need to be open to the probability that things are going to be surprising.

What I’m going to do this upcoming year is to go where the love is and not dwell in those places where I’m not feeling it. I’m going to do what I can do from exactly where I am. I’m going to work my 3 meters of influence. I’m going to listen to my winter soul; I’m going to listen to my winter heart. I’m going to read more poems and I’m going to feel them more, too.

I’m going to remember, in the words of Adam Zagajewski, that “It’s not time we lack but concentration.” And I’m going to try and concentrate more. Focus. (In other words, I intend to stay off of social media more :) )

But I’m also going to daydream more. I’m going to make appointments with my daydreams, with looking out windows, with staring into space with a notebook on my lap, and I’m going to keep those appointments. In a post from well before the pandemic, I quoted the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh who said: “You have an appointment with life, an appointment that is in the here and now.” And he has also said this:

“Around us, life bursts with miracles – a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there.”

I’m going to remind myself that I have an appointment with life every moment.

I hope that I can be a force for calm and I hope you can be as well. Because when we train ourselves to be calm, when we can share our calm, then this spreads. I really think this is a great gift for our time. It’s not saying that things are not difficult, that things are right even, or easy, but we can approach them together and work on solving whatever obstacles we face more easily in a calm state.

A Voice that Calms

A voice that calms, movements that calm,
eyes that are quiet – dreams that also do the
same, and enliven too . . .

Be a precious donor of peace and hope.
Give love to all you meet,

for so many in this world are being torn
apart.

 – Rumi
(Translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

And so lastly, I’m returning to an older post once again, taking my pre-pandemic advice, and I’m going to stop complaining. Not that we don’t have a ton of stuff to complain about, but I do recognize that it gets in my way. It’s not productive, and is even harmful. I actually have the line by Joan Didion (RIP) on my desk still (it’s now resting in my stone bowl with a tiny rock that accidentally (that’s another story for another day) came back with me from Rome in 2019: “Do not complain. Work Harder. Spend more time alone.” I’d forgotten the line by Elizabeth Gilbert who says, “Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.” And even though it’s still a pandemic, I hope we can all cultivate our inner weirdos in this coming year.

Complaining, says Gilbert, (and we know this in our creative hearts) scares away inspiration.

I hope this post finds you in a position to be tender. I hope you’re able to enjoy what you do enjoy. I hope in the year ahead you feel free to be weird. I hope you have the energy to be calm. I hope you remember to go where the love is, because you deserve that, and more.

I hope this next year you keep your appointment with life. I hope you keep your appointments with your daydreams, with that nap on the couch in the afternoon sun, and I hope you keep your appointment with the window and a cup of tea when the snow is falling outside, and I hope you keep your appointment with restorative long walks, and your appointment with something sweet, and something that makes you feel good and content.

January 1, 2022

So meanwhile, I have to admit that I spent a good couple of hours signing up to host a Substack newsletter, because, you know, all the writers are doing it. George Saunders! Austin Kleon! etc! And then, I’m a dope I guess, because it still felt wrong for me personally. I mull starting a paid subscription kind of newsletter about once a year, but I’ve never gotten so far along before changing my mind, haha! What the subscription usually is is $5 or $3 / month for 12 months. So what I’m asking you to consider is maybe tapping my “tip jar” button if you’ve never done so. (Just scroll down or look on the sidebar).

I have an idea for a Monday morning series that I’m going to start next week and I’m excited about new ideas for TwB! Thanks for being here, and happy new year!