The Pits and Pieces

  As the year 2022 comes to an end, perhaps we begin to feel we should focus on new intentions and resolutions. Gear up for the year ahead. Make it better than the one before and the one before that. Begin a new beginning. But…. As part of our human nature, we are drawn more towards endings than beginnings. Books with those satisfying last pages, happy-ever-after endings in movies, wanting tasks to be finished, seeing end-results and projects completed. Dishes put away. Laundry done and folded. We crave endings! A cliffhanger at the end of a series upsets us. What? Don’t leave me hanging, give me a proper ending! Beginnings are more ambiguous, a step into the unknown. And we don’t care much for uncertainty. Isn’t that why we plan everything? Create spreadsheets (aren’t spreadsheets great?), checklists, itineraries, five-year plans? Does anyone still do that - create a five-year plan? I think 2020 may have finally put an end to five-year planning. Beginnings can create anxie...

  I have just finished reading ‘ This one wild and precious life ’ by Sarah Wilson, which I wrote about in my post Connection-Lite a couple of weeks ago. I read it slowly, in bits and pieces, because it is such a thought-provoking book and I expect I will refer to it again in this blog at some point. Wilson is all about buying less and living more (#buylesslivemore). In our western culture of more, more, more, she encourages us to become more conscious consumers and re-use and re-purpose everything. Yes, even those old T-shirts that get grubby under the arms. She lops off the sleeves and makes deep-cut tank tops. In 2023, I aim to be less of a consumer. There, I’ve put my intention out there, to voice it into action and to hold myself accountable. But how? I began to examine all the ways I consume, starting with: how much did I spend on new articles of clothing this year? Wilson says the fashion industry is a huge emitter of carbon emissions, bigger than airline and shipping co...

  These lines from The Salt Path by Raynor Winn stopped me because of how well it was worded, and it echoed the kinds of things I sometimes think about as well. While walking the Southwest  Coast Path in England, Winn observes an old man taking off his clothes and sunbathing in the nude. She writes: “ We hide ourselves so well, exposing our skin in youth when it has nothing to say, but the other skin, with the record of time and event, the truth of life, we rarely show.” Isn’t that the truth?   We all hide ourselves, beneath layers of shiny veneer and cloaks of attitude; beneath masks and tasks of great importance; beneath glib words and pictures of perfect or near-perfect lives. We expose what we want to show to the world. And once we arrive at ‘the truth of life’, after decade upon decade of life events that bruise us and elevate us, crush us and uplift us, scar us and teach us, what do we do? We hide our glory. We conceal who we have become and what we’ve gaine...

  When this book (‘ this one wild and precious life ’ by Sarah Wilson) looked up at me from a library shelf this week, I had to take it home. I had quoted this exact line, ‘this one wild and precious life’ by the poet Mary Oliver, in my previous post. When books call out to you, you listen. In a chapter about how we endlessly scroll, all of us texting instead of picking up the phone and speaking, Wilson writes about what makes us disconnected when the illusion is that we are constantly plugged into everything. We use our devices to take the easy route of connecting. She calls this “Connection-lite”. Isn’t that just the perfect word for it? We know exactly what she means. Texting frees us from fully engaging in the moment, from a back-and-forth conversation or looking another person in the eye. Emailing allows us to distance ourselves. We can keep playing the ping-pong of connection because it feels safe, frees us from being vulnerable. Group chats are even safer. We throw out...