Letting the Dust Settle in the New Year

Why January is the time to slow things right down.

And so another January begins. A new year clicks into place. The seasons continue their relay and the clocks maintain their pace. Time forever strutting ahead while we must trot behind.

January can be a tricky one. We are reminded more than ever of the passing of time, looking both forward and back with a mix of hope, ambition, fear and perhaps futility. We can become easily overwhelmed by the entirety of that which we cannot control. The vast, expansive and yet fleeting time we have to live out our lives. It’s a lot to get our heads around, all the while being in what (if you live in the UK) also happens to be the dreariest month of the year.

This week I’ve been thinking about the passing of time more than ever.

Tomorrow will mark 10 years since my mum died on the 8th January, 2012. A decade since I’ve heard her laugh, or seen her smile, or infuriated her in numerous ways. It’s a strange thing to look back on some of the best years of my life, all more recent, and know that she wasn’t a part of them. That the ways I’ve changed for the better, becoming healthier and stronger, take me further away from the daughter she knew.

But that’s a very definite way of seeing the world. A binary black and white of life and death. Just as we categorise the years in blocks, and our endeavours as pass or fail.

I’ve been thinking about the little things we don’t see that affect us in important but often imperceptible ways. The changes in our cells each second of every day. The constant renewal, and shedding, of life. The moments we share that however fleeting will still leave their impression. Like a speck of dust on fabric, that over time will have contributed to the shade.

We don’t recognise the constant movement around us, because it’s too slow or too subtle for our attention. The seismic shifts happening in our lives over time, as unnoticed but crucial as the earth moving beneath our feet.

Rather than trust in time, we make it our enemy. We want things we can see or grab hold of. Opportunities with a quick pay-off. Large-scale plans of career, project or relationship, that we expect to leap into fully formed, chastising ourselves if we fail to make that jump. Our need for immediacy in our success makes January a cruel reminder; a marker of time that mocks ambition with its gravitational pull towards post-Christmas fatigue and wintery lethargy.

But as the world around us continues to move, January could be our opportunity, as nature would have it, to slow right down. A hibernation before Spring, of all our mental energies. A chance to be carried by the season, when our bodies need the most rest, taking this time to be more reflective than active. Still and calm enough to observe the details we miss when in constant movement.

When I think about my mum, it’s easy to feel sad about the things I can’t share with her, and the many ways and places in which she isn’t here. I can also think of the enormous impact she made on me, and the many ways in which she is so much a part of who I am. The fingerprints that she left on the world just by being here. (And the times she yelled at me for leaving fingerprints on anything! - she would have hated iPhones!)

We all impact each other in our interactions, no matter the relationship. Each exchange, for better or worse, is recorded in time and cannot be undone. In each encounter we are forever changed, in some small way, most often without realising it. Every friendship, relationship, argument, smile, frustration. We imprint on each other all the time, altering, just ever so slightly, the DNA of our future experience.

As a society we’re constantly striving for big, bigger, biggest, best. But the magic is in the molecular. The tiny togetherness of moments over time.

January doesn’t need to be a month of big change, detox, dedication and drive. The world is driving us forward regardless. Our bodies and minds constantly changing. It’s ok (healthy, even) to take a backseat once in a while - and nature would dictate that January is exactly the time to be doing that! Winter is a time for restoration. For slowing down, preserving energy, and reflecting on the multitude of tiny moments that help us grow.

So, as time continues its march and tomorrow rolls around, I won’t be focusing on the anniversary of loss, or the panic of the big stuff that’s missing. I’ll be raising a glass to the millions of mini-moments that made me who I am. And to the memory of my mum; the brilliant teacher, great dancer, terrible singer, and relentless piss-taker. I’ll be thinking of all our interactions that are forever woven into the fabric of me. And the ways in which she also lives in all who she encountered, as we all do. If only as a speck of dust.

(A rather meandering post this week, but cut me some slack ..it’s January 😉)

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The Spin

• We seem to have mutually agreed that January is a time to ramp things up and achieve all the things we wanted for ourselves last year - I’m calling bullish*t!

• We (to our peril) ignore that we are part of the natural world, and thus should also operate according to the seasons. Winter is a time for restoration and recharging our batteries.

• We might have times where we feel stagnant or stuck, but we are constantly moving forward in the tiniest of ways. We grow psychologically with every new second we experience - sometimes trust that, for right now, that’s enough.

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Adding More Weight

Some of the many reasons you might be feeling low this January

Anxiety and Change in the New Year

40 Little Things That Make a Big Difference in Your Day

I adore the writing of my friend, Jessica Rose Williams, who can teach us all more about slowing down - and her latest book, Enough, which is available for pre-order now!

Andrew Garfield’s beautiful words on grief in this interview: 👇

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Option to Go Deeper

Think about an event or achievement that you are thankful for. Now think of all the tiny things that had to happen to make that occur.

Think about the people, developments, emotions, decisions. Then drill down further to think about the environment around you that contributed - the housing, schooling, historical moments that contributed. Think about all the tiny tiny moments.

This is a way to slow your mind down, like a meditation, and observe how much is happening very slowly over time in order to carry us where we’re going.

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Snacks for Later

I just finished Ariel Levy’s brilliant memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply, about her quest for wanting it all. An amazing writer - I absolutely ripped through it!

I loved this recent newsletter from Mike Sowden - 4 Stupid Ways to Have a Better 2022

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Until Next Time..

If you like what you’ve read, you might also enjoy previous posts:

Once Upon A Time, We Told Ourselves A Story - Why we might be unreliable narrators of our own memories

Mini Me, You Repeat Me - What does our family past tell us about our present?

It’s Not You, It’s Me …And My Parents - What our attachment style can tell us about adult relationships

It’s Time We Stopped Stressing About Time - And started playing with the present