A lot survived. A lot was refined. A lot died too, and I find myself rejoicing and mourning at once on the eve of this new year.
I’m trying to see if there was a golden thread, or a few threads, that linked the chains of each month in 2021 together, because retrospective intentionality is my paradoxical thing apparently. There are a few that I can spot, and they all revolve around my loved ones. My own little family - as in Sam, myself and now another little one coming soon to a Victorian mid terrace nowhere near you - our extended family, and my closest most beloved friends.
I think 2020 really forced me to open my sleepy eyes and not take these relationships for granted, to actually put the work into them which I’d been meaning to for the longest time. So that’s what I tried to start doing in 2021. And I’ll be honest, it’s been really bloody hard to be intentional about relationships that have just ‘always been there’ and you assume will be forevermore. But looking back I really do feel a lot closer to the people in my life despite the physical distance that separates us and has actually often made me feel isolated from them on the bad days.
I also feel like I’m shaking off old habits that made me see the people closest to me in a one dimensional, often transactional, way. I find I’m seeing them in a more dynamic way now. In other words, I’m moving into a constant state of getting to know them rather than settling for who I think they are and always will be. It surprised me to find that the latter was how I saw my loved ones. Given that I’ve always seen myself as constantly evolving and never one stable thing, you’d think I’d extend that same grace to others. But this is one lesson learned that I’m continuing to practise and will always be working at by its very nature. It has started with building an understanding of people as they are, wherever it is you meet them, and accepting them as they might be or not be in the near or far future, and then deciding each day to love them all the same. Whether that love manifests itself in each passing ‘I hope they’re doing okay’ thought or in a message or phone call on a random Thursday evening, or in a yearly meetup that’s always cobbled together at the last hour, or in a last minute trip to Barcelona… that’s perfectly okay. My only expectations are that I continue cultivating these close bonds with all of the love and time and patience I can give, for as long as they’ll allow me to give it. Because I’ve started to enjoy actively appreciating just how precious each one is.
What else. Well, Sam and I ‘achieved’ a lot this year and stopping to look back and smile at those achievements is something neither of us have ever been good at. At this point you might expect me to list them off and conclude that celebrating myself is the learning, but actually the thing I finally unearthed here is that these ‘achievements’ really aren’t anything in themselves. At the time, of course, we stopped to celebrate each one with the loved ones I rambled on about in the previous paragraph, but then it was full speed ahead onto the next thing. Because that’s all we knew about life. There was no room for stopping, resting, appreciating for too long. There was always another milestone to reach, and so we kept running towards it. Anyone who knows me well will know that this restless and blind ambition is a little beastie I’ve been wrestling with forever: in my career, my relationship with Sam, my worldly goals and even in my creativity. Too often have I denied its existence, only to arrive at that infamous point of burnout which comes after running for too long and pushing too hard into what ends up being total exhaustion and existential angst. No exaggeration.
Accumulating achievements - and generally amassing pointless ‘stuff’ that one never really needs - simply for the sake of it is not really how I want to live my life over the long term. But that’s easy to say when you don’t know anything else and no one is showing you another way that works for you. Lesson? We’re figuring out for ourselves how to go slower on our own terms, and funnily enough, this will take time. No more running from pillar to post. There’s also a certain little human arriving in the new year who might just force that habit out of us anyway…
Now that is an adventure I am both wildly excited and inexplicably terrified for us to step into, hopefully with our eyes as open as they can be and with our family & friends close by the whole time.
