#217: On fresh beginnings, the passage of time & self love

Jan 09, 2023

Hello!

It’s the second week of the year, I’m sick in bed and thinking of our complex relationship with the past, with things we can’t change yet choose to clutch on to. At the same time, it’s a little amusing to see how fast we move on. We say Goodbye, 2022 and Hello, 2023, and walk away from our past selves.

As someone whose memory is rather unreliable, I’ve developed a healthier relationship with what no longer is. On most days, I’m optimistic about the present aka how the day will go, or at the very least, how I can salvage it when it doesn’t go my way. How we spend our days add up to become the future of our own making, which is something I’m learning to accept and work with.

And by and large, I must admit, I don’t mind change. I recently came across this post by Rudy Francisco (below) and realized how far I’ve come in my mental health journey. Here’s to showing up for ourselves and keeping it real!

rudyfrancisco

A post shared by Rudy Francisco (@rudyfrancisco)

For the sake of self accountability and a little more self love, three resolutions for this year and every year after that:

Drink more water
Move more
Journal regularly + Weekly reviews

These seem achievable enough. Fingers crossed.

A few good lines on time

I don’t know what to make of these (yet) but some literature on the subject:

“Try to see the past as a room separate from the one you live in now. You can go in there, but you don’t live there anymore.”
-Richard Templar, The Rules of Life
“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
-T.S. Eliot
“…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“Gardening situates you in a different kind of time, the antithesis of the agitating present of social media. Time becomes circular, not chronological; minutes stretch into hours; some actions don’t bear fruit for decades.”
-Olivia Laing, Funny Weather (via)
“…the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been.”
-Juliet Marillier

Poetry Corner

Five poems to help you make sense of life and time.

1. the year of letting go by Warsan Shire

the year of letting go
of understanding loss, grace of the word ‘no’
and also being able to say ‘you are not kind’
the year of humanity/humility
when the whole world couldn’t get out of bed
everyone i’ve met this year says the same thing
‘you are so easy to be around, how do you do that?’
the year i broke open and dug out all the rot with own hands
the year i learnt small talk
and how to smile at strangers
the year i understood that i am my best when i reach out and ask ‘do you want to be my friend?’
the year of sugar, everywhere
softness. sweetness. honey honey.
the year of being alone
and learning how much i like it
the year of hugging people i don’t know because i want to know them
the year i made peace and love
right here

2. Ordinary Day by Christine Yurick

At the end of the day we went to see
the setting sun. It was beautiful and quiet
and nothing was going on except
for some horses and a walker
but you were there with me and
we stayed until it was too cold.
The coldest night of the year.
I wonder about the animals. I
think about them all night while
I am warm in bed and the cat
is sleeping on top of me. We wake up
and it is dark and we feed the woodstove
and drink our coffee and wait for the sun
to rise and start a new day. I feed the birds
and breathe the fresh cold air and feel the
hard frozen ground under my feet.

3. I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life by Mary Oliver

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

4. Sitting Alone by Ching-t’ing Mountain by Li Po

Flocks of birds fly high and away
A solitary cloud calmly drifts on
We look at each other and never get bored -
Just me and Ching-t’ing mountain.

5. Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.