Circling the sun
Last week marked my thirty-fifth rotation around the sun. Every year, around this time, I like to take stock of my life— my successes and failures, my hopes and wishes, my queries and answers. I never seem to completely come full circle in any of these areas, rather they are ongoing and forever adaptable contemplations and temporary understandings of who I am as I pertain to the present state of the world.
This year, as in many recent years, the planet is on fire. Lives — human and non-human— are lost to war, to starvation, to drought. Ecosystems are on the brink of collapse. Affordable housing is in crisis. Anxiety, depression, loneliness, detachment from self and society, are an epidemic continuing to grow as access to care becomes more difficult, addiction becomes more prevalent, and our ties to community and village-minded living are severed, deepening the hurt and isolation of humanity. Those who would seek to feed these separations are celebrated and revered, while those who aim to bond us as a collective, stronger together, are ridiculed as weak and foolish— “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats). We have forgotten how to be a part of something beyond ourselves, how to move with one another, hold opposing views in our minds, communicate effectively and with kindness, empathy, and appreciation for the other. I wonder if a remembering of these ways will help to guide us. I worry that while some search for a way to connect— to embody— there are more who would seek to separate.
It is my belief, that the search to know oneself, is one of our greatest difficulties and joys. As part of the planet, in the way it breathes and moves, we depend on everything around us for survival, and yet the awareness we possess has worked to detatch us from that connection. Perhaps the practice of knowing oneself— where we come from, how our mind works, what we feel, how we contribute and connect, what errs we have done and what improvements we have yet to accomplish— is one way we can rekindle our bond to both human-kind and the environment that sustains us. Know thyself, for “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” (Aristotle).
As I reflect on my birthday this year, what then, do I know of myself?
I know I have experienced many triumphs and failures, some of which I have learned from while others still unravel. All of these experiences, I have learned, are interconnected. One leads to another and another. They are embedded within the unique way I see the world around me, how I interpret and filter it, and what I produce and do and understand as a result.
So as I close one year and march into another— another year of writing, of promoting a book already written, nurturing relationships, sharing life, teaching, and learning— trailing what will inevitably come along with me, I make one promise to myself. I promise to remember the interconnectedness of all things— to keep “looking deeper, zooming out, or in. Opening possibilities for a new way of being” (Rick Rubin). For in a world marked by chaos and uncertainty, what else is there to do?