Each Monday this month, I’m offering a prompt to encourage you to reflect on the (Gregorian calendar) year. If you think of a friend who might want to play along, would you please share this with them? And if you are that friend reading this now, I welcome you to subscribe so you get notified of the next one.
Dear Friend,
I like to think Earth is tilting her forehead away from Sun this week, leaning backwards until she reaches the La-Z-boy recliner’s maximum horizontal tilt position the way my grandpa did after dinner each night. He would slowly recede into the softness of the grey-blue leather, his shiny bald forehead distancing itself from the glow of the reading lamp as the chair coaxed him further into sweet darkness. This was his ritual of surrender, when he’d read the day’s news until his body abruptly and uncontrollably folded the paper in on itself as if to say, “that’s enough for today, Boppa.”
That’s enough for today.
We surrender to darkness to recover from the brightness of day. Darkness beckons us to rest into our inherent enough-ness.
Certainly, there is pain in darkness. But just as much, there is restoration. I believe we love darkness at least as much as we fear our shadows in the night.
So in the quiet darkness of this week (for those of us in the north), I invite you to reflect on the rhythms and pace of your year.
Daily, did your pace feel sustainable?
Weekly, was your rhythm nourishing?
Monthly, did the ebb and flow result in balance?
There are many forces that pull us out of our own natural rhythm. Capitalism, infinite growth mindset, the enough-ness wound. Saying Yes too often. Absence of living wages that force us to overwork. Culture of overwork. It takes a radical sort of resistance to pull back from the unsustainable pace driving us toward extinction and rest into our right pace, one in tune with the uniqueness of our human spirit and the rhythmic ebb and flow of Earth’s light-dark pendulum.
I once heard a story about someone’s grandma, who, between two jobs, would religiously lie on the couch for thirty minutes to rest between shifts. The grandkids still ran around the house. The unfinished business remained unfinished. Despite the odds, she found her way to resist the oppressive and unjust pace of a structurally racist economy where she could.
The pace we move through life naturally ebbs and flows with Earth’s seasons and life’s seasons. But for many of us, it ebbs less and flows more rapidly each year.
I’m still finding my right pace, one that honors my gentle and sensitive spirit as much as my driven and ambitious mind. This year felt like a series of energetic bursts and crashes mixed with a steady level of exhaustion underneath it all.
Besides the exhaustion, what tells me my pacing was off was the difficulty I had slowing down enough to appreciate what was happening. It was a year full of good growth and beautiful experiences, but it all passed by too quickly for my system. Theres a quiet grief I feel about this that is asking me to reflect.
I invite you to do the same.
Prompt: Am I living life at the right pace for me?
When you think about the pace you moved at this year, did it feel sustainable? How might you answer this question for your daily, weekly, and monthly rhythm? Did your days feel rushed? Your weeks packed? Your months a blur? Or did they drag on? How might you better plan for the different pace of each season?
When did you feel like you were moving at the right pace for you? What were you doing? What did you feel (i.e. sensations, emotions) that told you it was your right pace? What allowed you to shift gears into the right speed?
Whose pace do you often get swept into? Think about your workplace, the pace of the news, your family’s tempo, your inner critic. In what small way can you resist and reclaim your agency in the year ahead?
Wishing you the sweet, slow, quiet solitude of darkness,
Ryan