While It's January
The Year of MMXXVI Moves In
Calendar years are a bit burdensome. The calendar grid falls over life in a way that doesn’t really correspond to true beginnings and proper endings. Space and time doesn’t even really know when it’s Saturday, but we in our procession imagine that the week is actually ending. We are ending something and beginning something else. Therefore, the idea of “mindfulness” (the rage of which is kind of ebbing now) is the one true thing we have - now. We have a now which one we may miss in a little while. The mindfulness craze was and is all about holding on to that reality for a moment. It’s miracle of now.
In a related spirit, were I to ascribe to a list of wishes (rather than resolutions) moving forward, as we are still, right now, in the dead of Winter (a naturalistic term if ever there were one), I would look for
Less smartphone time. Oh, if only I could convince people that ‘now’ is not just significant but that ‘here and now’ is. The saddest procession is watching the slow-gait-with-phone-in-hand, providing an apparent fantasy world that mussels people coming the other way, impedes them on the stairs, and browbeats them on the subway, as both elbowing and bright screen setting means that this phone is the center of all here and now. Go away. You don’t even need to read a book, but please develop some thoughts!
Less phone time while in the agora. Find a secluded corner for your phone conversations, if they are that important. Give others’ ears and inner thoughts a rest.
Less panic in the herd. Follow fewer crowds - particularly online. Again - it’s not all in the phone. The world isn’t really a series of personalized news feeds. So much is noise, and that is noise designed to keep thoughts at bay. On the other hand, there is reaction, and that goes straight to the bottom line. There is even a clothing line with that title. React less, and consider more.
Do read. Read classic literature. If Bleak House by Dickens is too long for you, enjoy a chapter of it. Pull out a brilliant short story by Chekhov; read the first pages of Sense and Sensibility and recognize contemporary attitudes while traipsing about Georgian England. Find Fahrenheit 451 and see if you can put it down. Many of the older novels and works are online for free, but try the book version and see how uncluttered print without interruption can be. Find a book that becomes your whole world for a while.
Do write. Write by hand. Write a long letter to someone. Use a real envelope and stamp and surprise someone. Send a postcard. Use the US Mail while it still exists and delivers! Write a journal, and setup a time to add to it, daily.
Smile at a stranger on occasion. Smile at a cashier. Make a joke. Acknowledge that life passes on like a Train à Grande Vitesse or the Shinkansen. It may as well be worth it, and you will remember it.
Create order where you can. Walk up the right side of the stairs. Hold the door. Let them out first. Make it possible for everyone to get through the day while suffering less.
These ideas pale in comparison to what’s happening in war zones and areas of public discord, protest, and violence. Yes - those things are happening, terrible things, but if you’re among the lucky to simply have a day, have it, and have it in the best of health for a new year.
I’ll see you soon.