It is somehow upon us, the closing of one year and the beginning of another; a tipping point where culturally we are often encouraged to suddenly alter, prune and snip ourselves into better shapes, different shapes. But I like my shape just fine on 31st December 2016, and we are changed in fractional ways all the time anyway—by people, things, experiences that we initially brushed off as unimportant. It sounds so obvious out loud, but I think we can get so wrapped up in this urgent need to better ourselves, to learn and grow and improve, that we forget that it happens at an essential, cellular level without us even really trying. Put a different way, I'd rather grow like an oak tree than a skyscraper—I know which one of those has a chance of being intact, even stronger, hundreds of years later.
Below, mostly unrelated but beautiful, Don DeLillo managed to put words to something I've often tussled with—the staying or leaving when it comes to ultimate beauty.
TWO SOMETHINGS TO READ. THIS:
Having had this one lying open in a browser tab for far too long (weeks, probably), I have resolved to read it today, now. It concerns hope in darker times, and the importance of resisting easy despair—neither of which are particularly simple to digest with coffee and toast in the morning, but they are important and we must never stop trying to make sense of ourselves.
AND:
This piece felt frustratingly relevant to me, if such a thing can be. Each and every word Maria Popova had quoted from Ann Hamilton felt like it was hitting me in the head, or the stomach, or both. Is it possible to feel weak at the knees with understanding?
It's generally about the creative value of unproductive time, not knowing. Here are a few sentences, in case you don't fancy a long read:
“Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between.”
The end.
I hope that as the clocks strike midnight, wherever you are in the world, that you can hold yourself dear, trust in your human shape, and remember that you have a long, long 365 days ahead of you in which to grow a little here and there.
Farewell, see you next sometime.
Copyright © 2016 Ella Frances Sanders, All rights reserved.