New Spring, New Year

Pragmatics

I don't have a lot of pragmatics this time around-- must be the spring fever.

• -I do, however, have a great book recommendation, very much in the theme of new beginnings. The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty is a treat, a very hopeful and poignant treat, for the mind and soul.


• -Unrelated, but a little crowing to do: The Get Satisfied book enjoyed a healthy dose of publicity via MSN.com. Here's the link to "5 Money Books to Change Your Life."

Prose

Saturday, much of it filled with errands, held unexpected joys. The local IGA market seemed to hold half the community in its aisles, many of them preparing for Easter. I caught up with neighbors, chatting on everything from church to walking to finding true happiness at work. Half the carts seemed to balance tulip plants and asparagus, and my neighbors’ faces seemed lit up with the promise of spring and its gateway holiday, Easter.

Later, Gavin and I met friends at the library Easter Egg Hunt, and then walked over for the year’s first Saturday playground romp. The wind was mild, Gavin and Zakariya reveled in their boundless energy, and I got to know Zakariya’s mom much better. I even got just the slightest hint of sunburn on my nose.

After Easter dinner, our family strolled down to the foot of Essex Main Street and enjoyed the mini-beach that abuts the Connecticut River. It struck me as we drank in the early spring sun that the year contains many beginnings. On March 20 I heard several people, young and old, work the first day of spring into their conversation. Crocus and daffodil sightings are now reported regularly, with sincere enthusiasm.

The last “beginning” was the official New Year, when the ball dropped and we all resolved to make a multitude of changes. But the spring beginning feels more real to me, more in the moment. Not so much of “I’m going to…” as “I am here; I am noticing the world around me. I am experiencing hope.”

Another new beginning awaits me: after 3 days of training in New York City, I’ll be a truly home-based medical writer with an Internet company. I am looking forward to more relaxed mornings, a low key wardrobe, and diminished gas and dry cleaning bills. I hope my home schedule also translates into wiser use of time— working more efficiently and steadily, planning meals and home tasks more thoughtfully, using lunch to write a few creative paragraphs. I’m looking forward to seeing it unfold.

Come to think of it, each year contains so many new beginnings: the turning of each season, birthdays, back to school, out for summer, and of course the actual New Year. All of these are opportunities, naturally occurring reminders to step back and reflect, to both appreciate and create new promises.

Saying Thank You

Local readers: I will be at Burgundy Books in East Haddam tomorrow (Sunday, January 13) at 4PM, promoting Get Satisfied. Please come!

Pragmatics

-If your thank you note skills have gotten rusty, here’s a good primer.

-Still feeling stumped? Here are sample notes for all kinds of occasions.

-Here are some tips to encourage kids to write thank yous. For the beginning writer, they make fill in the blank cards—Mad Libs for etiquette!

-I liked this blog by a young woman with diabetes. Obviously challenged by the demands of the disease, she devoted her space to wholehearted thanks this past November.

-I recently saw some troops in the Memphis airport. Regardless of my feelings about the war, I saw their young faces and was struck by how much they are sacrificing. Check out the Gratitude Campaign’s video on saying thank you to these brave men and women.

Prose

After every celebratory event of my young life, I was strongly encouraged, ordered really, to put pen to paper and write a glowing thank you note. This practice has slipped a bit in recent years – I often let a phone call or e-mail suffice. But this year I’m savoring the thought of sitting down with my fresh packet of blank holiday thank you cards.

I’ve already received some thank yous. Aunt Norma penned the first note. She has always been the note writer, signing Uncle Jack’s name first, except now there is no choice in the matter. Uncle Jack suffers from dementia and Norma carries every task imaginable these days. Life has not been easy, from young married farm life through present health concerns for both of them. But I feel Norma’s irrepressible spirit when she writes of her “deep appreciation for our many blessings”. She also reminded me, as Jack turns 80, to “Spend some time enjoying life and togetherness. Time is so precious…”. My mom’s notes echo the same sincere thanks to a family that she loves deeply.

Tom’s sister Corlyne would not rest until she knew that Gavin’s package had arrived. I think of the many long-distance family members who phone in orders, wrap packages, and wait in line at the post office thinking of us. Christmas morning is peppered with their phone calls, some reunions with folks we should call twice as often.

My mom needed help to haul our gifts up the steps this year. She always manages a true surprise, this year a noisy electric guitar for Gavin. He picks it up at least once a day, and every “riff” recalls Christmas Day and his loving “Nanny-Jean”.

Our neighbor Mr. Dube is often a “wave-to” neighbor. Each year flies by, and we see him less when the cold weather sets in. But he is faithful in his pre-mass Christmas Eve visits, always wielding an oversized toy for Gavin and wine for the grownups. He also remembers Gavin’s February birthday, when I recall waving down the driveway to him while in labor, panting, “we’re off to the hospital, finally!”

This year’s thank yous don’t feel like obligations. They feel like a meditation on the many blessings that surround us, in the form of people who genuinely care. I guess I’ve got Aunt Norma’s and Mom’s appreciative genes, a gift I treasure more than any other.

Resolution Solution

CT readers: Sunday, January 13 at 4PM is the new “snow date” for my reading at Burgundy Books in East Haddam. Here is a link to Author’s Track, a site on local readings and signings. (See lower right for the Get Satisfied reading. The site also links to Burgundy Books.)

Pragmatics

In the interest of simplicity, I propose boycotting yet another “to do” list, this time in the form of 2008’s resolutions. I have chosen instead one philosophical perspective to aspire to, embodied by a quotation (see Prose below).

I hope these quotation sites spark some genuine inspiration and motivation that extend far into 2008.

-Of course, some quotes on simplicity, from ThinkExist.com.
-It all boils down to just living thoughtfully day to day. About.com has several great quotes on the business of living well.
-Make this year a more creative endeavor! Follow your dreams.com includes a collection of creativity quotes.
-Just for fun, here are some quotes on the New Year itself from the Quote Garden.

Prose

This has been a hard season for me, the kind where I feel I’m doing everything right and everything still goes wrong. I wrote in early autumn about complicated families, and this last entry of 2007 could very well be part 2 of a long-running series on the topic.

But I know that it is time to regroup, a concept the New Year’s holiday uniquely champions. Stopping to think back on the last month, even with the formula of usual holiday stresses + family problems = near insanity, I am grateful to recall several windows in time that offered comfort and joy, just like the Christmas carol says.

Both Christmas Eve and Day were graced by family walks, a budding tradition I relish much more than gifts and meals. The Eve found us strolling around unseasonably warm Essex, CT. Gavin played on the mini-beach that joins Main Street with the Connecticut River. We fed the gulls, ducks, and geese. Tom popped into a store for some very last minute stocking stuffers. We were refreshed by the cool air and the smell of the river water. Christmas Day dinner was capped by a walk in Chester. All of the stores were closed, of course, and the silence on the street, only our footsteps to interrupt it, was a treasure.

My sister also struggles with these family calamities, and sent me the gift of appreciative words in the middle of a chaotic week. She shared the visual clarity of a berried shrub peeking out of the Vermont snow, a big silver bucket of cranberries at the ready for the holidays. These words of appreciation reminded me that there is always beauty to be found.

I want a quotation to center around, words that summarize what I want and need for my New Year. There are so many sophisticated words to choose from, wise insights from great academics and scholars, sweeping poetry verses that quicken my pulse. But I keep returning to a fluorescent green index card that seems to repeatedly resurface around my house. One Sunday at church, the 4th through 6th grade class greeted each attendee at the door with a neatly handwritten card. Their project had been to choose and distribute quotations to the congregants. I was given one from Aesop’s Fables:

Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.

There’s simplicity for you. It is difficult to embody gratitude when times are stressful, and yet I know that this message is key for me this year. It looks backward at my childhood love of the character Pollyanna; it looks forward to the sort of writing I want to do and the kind of days I want to spend. And for today, it centers me on all that I have, versus what is lacking.

Wishing you the happiest of New Years.

Cutting the Fat

Connecticut readers: On DECEMBER 1, at 7:30pm, SIMPLE LIVING AMERICA will host a special Q&A with the director of What Would Jesus Buy, Rob VanAlkemade, following a screening of his movie. As a contributing author of Get Satisfied, I will also be part of the Q & A.

Please come!

CRITERION CINEMAS
86 Temple St., New Haven
Call (203) 498-2500 for info.

Tomorrow is weigh-in day. Yes, I’m in the company of countless middle-agers who have joined Weight Watchers, and so far (it’s only been 2 weeks), so good.

It feels good to regain control, to stop and think about balance, and my attraction to this approach has got me thinking beyond my waistline. If only I could “track points” in every area, look thoughtfully at my consumption at the end of every day, and regroup. How great it would be to have this feeling of mastery over the money in my wallet, over my energy use, over the ebb and flow of my relationships. How useful it would be to have it all mapped out on a spreadsheet for my perusal, to be able to say “today I excelled”, or “this morning I overdid it.”

But the real world isn’t like that. And if I managed to design a “system” for everything, I’m sure it would become tedious very quickly. Getting back to the Weight Watchers model, you’ve got to leave room for a splurge, allow a reward for a week of wise eating. Feeling starved will only lead to a food fest. But after the splurge you might want to conserve a while, to avoid tipping the scale.

Splurge, to me, has a happy, bubbly sound, while binge takes on an ominous tone. I am thinking of these words, specifically, in relation to Christmas. It is so easy to leap from splurge (one delightfully indulgent item) to binge (can’t stop shopping even though I hate the mall) in a matter of minutes.

Does consumer binging arise from feeling starved? When we binge with our wallets, are we hungry for renewal, craving approval, starving for a deeper satisfaction? After the binge do we feel any better, or just drained? Best to back off the retail buffet if your consuming starts to make you feel consumed.

Extremism doesn’t work for most of us, not for diets, not for shopping, not for simplifying our lifestyle, and almost never in the long run. But an attitude of thoughtfulness can really effect some change. In my new weight loss effort, it occurred to me that I don’t need to eat right after awakening. I am a very early riser, and come to think of it not really hungry as I march first thing to the pantry. A simple rule of sticking to just coffee until at least 7 has defeated my Hobbit-like craving for “second breakfast” every morning.

In the Christmas shopping swirl that starts to deepen into a vortex, similarly small changes have kept things more sane this year. Mom is leading the charge to each buy 1 gift per person, and the in-laws suggested no gifts for the grownups (what a relief!). Tom and I are getting a coffeemaker and exchanging pajamas. Mom’s effort is founded on simplicity, the in-laws’ on their practicality, and Tom and I share the love for all things warm at the holiday. Simple, practical, and warm sounds quite inviting to me. And it feels like quite enough.

Joyful Juxtaposition

Pragmatics

Sometimes contrasts allow us to see better. Some thoughts on the topic:

• I found another writer who married juxtaposition with joy. Here are some thoughts on learning from contrasts in the workplace, as well as the garden
• This is the second reference I found to the joy of juxtaposition in gardening.
• Here are a photographer’s thoughts on how the act of simplifying allows, by contrast, the important things to stand out.
  

Prose

I finally tackled it yesterday. Well, some of it. The mess in our house had reached critical mass, partly the fallout from busy schedules, part the fallout from domestically unfriendly choices (like using precious spare time to write). My disgust with the clutter grew for weeks, and it was this disgust that propelled me to clear the decks with the pace of a whirling dervish.

It felt good to be ruthless. Magazines that I hoped to someday read found their place in the recyclables paper bag. Tom’s tool bag and work equipment have landed too many times on the kitchen chair, so I cleared a new home for them in the pantry. Gavin consented to donating his “baby Legos” to charity. Once the decks were cleared, I dusted. I thanked the heavens for our Roomba purchase. The automated vacuum did not come cheap, but it saves me heaps of time and energy. It makes it possible that I can dust and vacuum in an afternoon, rather than having to pick one!

I clean best when indignant and angry—it fires me up. But in the bedroom I ran into some items that quieted my rant. I started to notice the beauty in our mess, framed by the contrast between real and ideal. The primary colors of Gavin’s many books strewn about our bedroom, clashing with our attempt at muted tones. A “great job” giraffe sticker stuck to the top of our otherwise sleek alarm clock, a memory of a worthwhile day at Kindergarten. A cardboard “treasure chest” next to my jewelry box, recalling the day when Gavin split his gems with me. Countless shells and rocks and leaves, cluttering our windowsill but also memorializing many fine walks. Any decorator worth her salt would have me hustling to remove this “clutter”, and I did find better homes for most of the items. But I appreciated those imprints of a busy, happy family and all of the clutter that can entail.

I also thought back to a personal joy I experienced this week. A columnist at the Baton Rouge Advocate gave eloquent thanks for things not owned, a thought that propelled me reduce and recycle (and acknowledge that there are some things I can’t reuse). Even better, he called my essay in Get Satisfied "charming”, definitely a banner moment.

The contrasts outdoors are getting more extreme: branches against sky, the sharp cold against our skin, and soon the fall of snow that will soften but also showcase every shape. I'm hoping for a winter where each juxtaposition lends a lesson, each contrast uncovers a forgotten joy.

Ants, The Tao, and, always, Simplicity

Note: I am pleased that I will be published in Simple Living America’s anthology Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough. Watch this space for more information.

The ants finally came this week. We’d purchased a National Geographic Ant Farm for Gavin at Christmas time and mailed away for its inhabitants.

The package said to refrigerate them, to “calm them down” before the big move from vial to farm (does hypothermia calm anyone down?). Then, I tapped and they fell, great heaps of them, upon the gooey green gel that will be their home, their food, and, finally, their resting place.

I can’t help but draw parallels to humans. What if my neighborhood, most of us outside for long-postponed lawn maintenance in the May sun, had been scooped up into a tube, dumped out into a house of meat? I don’t think we’d consider the free food some sort of paradise. Still, we’d eat to survive, try to replicate the homes we’d been torn from (as closely as we could with meat). We’d chat just like we had on the asphalt of our old street, only now on meat paving, while Gavin played with toys made of meat. (I don’t think his scooter would roll very well.)

I peered in, overlooking the stereotypical industrious ants and focusing instead on the corpses (or pieces of corpses) that didn’t survive the journey. The anniversary of the Hindenburg has just passed, and (always one to take a metaphor too far), all I heard in my head was Oh, the humanity. Okay, maybe not humanity. But, oh, the unfairness and sadness of being uprooted, of stepping over corpses that had tumbled out with you. Also, they have lost their leader. Federal law prevents shipping of queen harvester ants.

I’m coping now, just as the ants are. I mean, the deed is done. We can’t return them. Tom pointed out that in a big colony those ants were probably used to stepping over corpses to begin with, inevitable with the large community containing infant to elderly. Small, strange comfort there.

It’s 5 something AM on Sunday, my best writing time, and I have to work through the restlessness caused by the ants upstairs. What does any of this have to do with inching toward simplicity, my beloved theme? The only metaphor I can draw is compassion.

Many proponents of the simpler life talk about how releasing burdensome, nonmeaningful things, be they habits, possessions, or attitudes, goes beyond simple, egocentric de-stressing and works to free up compassion. There is less to get in the way of connecting. A Simplicity as Compassion course designed for churches builds on this premise as a way of connecting with the earth and to people affected by environmental degradation.

It turns out there is an old tradition of connecting simplicity with compassion. Lao-Tzu listed them as two of the greatest treasures, with a third important element in between: patience. I love that I learned this at Tao Logic, which seems to be an unusually evolved Web site design/consulting group. They talk about patience in the context of page loads and site specifications, and for the first time I can relate to “techies”. Also, a nice insight into how you can bring your belief system into whatever you do.

I got more information on the Three Jewels of the Tao from Wikipedia: Simple in actions and in thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world. I am not sure who wrote the entry, but like how they explained Lao-Tzu further: Simplicity is extremely important in Taoist philosophy in that complex actions generally are destructive and can upset the natural balance of the universe by imparting too much intellectual yang structure into a person's actions. Acting in simplicity allows for one to lead a more harmonious life without having to deal with complex social constructs that can arise from living in that complexity. The more simplistic an action, the truer that action can be from that individual. Patience is also key in Taoism in that the lack of patience is caused by wants.

Reading this, I am reminded of patience as a great connector. For me, more need to sit quietly and think. To sometimes observe rather than act. To stop for a rest. To lower my "to do list" standards.

This morning, Taoism. Later, a return to our Congregational church after 2 weeks off for Vegas. All thought provoking, all good moves on a Sunday morning overrun with ants.