The Motion of My Year: A review of 2018
‘I am made and remade continually’ — Virginia Woolf
Life is a constant oscillation — a rhythmic and, at times, paradoxical movement between seemingly opposing experiences. We can rise to smiles and fall to tears in a moment.
I know this motion well.
January 2018 was one the most difficult months I have ever experienced. Heavy is a word that comes to mind. Heavy with fear and worry, a lack of buoyancy that physics and I both believed would result in me sinking to a place where flashlights are fairytales.
The cause of my heaviness (not in chronological order):
- My Mum was diagnosed with cancer again (third time)
- My romantic relationship was dissolving quickly (fifth time)
- My business (that I co-own) was running out of money (first time)
- I couldn’t afford rent (third time)
This was, officially, the worst start to a year I have ever had. I still remember where I was when that thought first arrived unannounced: Archie’s on Gertrude St. I was sitting at the bench looking out onto the street, people talking louder than the music, fresh coffee grabbing noses with its tantalising fingers and me, a plank of flesh and bone numb to it all. Moments before I had received the (very) delayed news that my Mum was diagnosed with cancer again. The messenger was the diagnosed herself, crying before saying hello. This softened and hardened me simultaneously, another example of the paradoxical motion that is life.
Now sitting at the bench sipping a lukewarm coffee, a voice that sounded more like a news reporter’s than mine began to inform me that this indeed was the worst start to the year that any known being has had, EVER. A statement that felt more like a statistic and, at that point (it was probably 8am), I was not in the mood for stats. I was not in the mood for insight or perspective. But moods change. Autumn taught me that. And after a while I remember experiencing something that I never had before: an appreciation for pain in realtime.
This was a moment between tears where I no longer was acting out a play I did not audition for, but rather sitting in the crowd thinking how beautiful and meaningful the play was, a story worth telling. But this was just a moment. Unlike what many people, I’m sure, believe, owning a meditation studio and practicing regularly doesn’t make me exempt from pain. On the contrary, I believe I feel pain more vividly now than I ever have before. It just doesn’t last as long. I remember telling myself this throughout that month, that no matter how much the pain hurts, these feelings, these dark, heavy feelings will change. They must.
And they did. Fast forward to now: I’m approaching the crest of 2018 on a houseboat in Sausalito, California smiling more than I ever have and waking up, each morning, to a woman who employs her love as the sea employs waves, to move and rise and convince heavy ships that they too are light. I could not have imagined this is where I would be geographically, emotionally or spiritually a year ago. I did believe then that my poor start would bleed into the rest of the year and the many years that would follow.
This drastic change in motion gives me hope that the only thing I can rely on this year is how I move through moments on a day-to-day basis and trust that this pattern will guide me towards a life worth living, a story worth telling.
