New Year New Work New Paths

The path of love is not the path the comfort, Creina Alcock wrote.  And so we begin this year in a state of extreme discomfort, most of us, it seems to me.

I am thinking of my intentions this year, more acutely knowing that which I have taken for granted was not, in fact, guaranteed, and that time is the devil lulling me into a false sense of security, to linger at the party and sleep the days away, because tomorrow always comes.

Until it doesn’t. In 2017 I want to learn how to live every day like it was my last, which I have to thank the current administration here in town for helping me to visualize more viscerally.  So there’s that.

I’m going to try to slow down and pay better attention this year. Conquer the egoic anxiety that is always telling me I am not doing or being enough. I would like less shallow and more meaningful engagements. Less electricity and more papyrus. Embrace the troglodyte within unapologetically.

I also went down to the National Mall on Inauguration Day and for the Women’s March on Washington and made some photographs with my old crown graphic because I think that is how its going to roll this year and I better start now. I have big plans for this year and I hope you’ll follow along, or we’ll meet in the offline world and have a great conversation.

Back to Creina Alcock, she lived among the Zulu in  South Africa, and she had this to say about rupture and reconciliation, words which might serve us now:

“The path of love is not a path of comfort. It means going forward into the unknown with no guarantee of safety, even though you’re afraid. Trusting is dangerous, but without trust there is no hope for love, and love is all we ever have to hold against the dark.”