We are at the time of the year when we review and make commitments for the next year. Taking an inventory of what you have and what you need has merit. And is often a short lived aspirational thought. Ah January! Looking back and looking forward, the very heart of the meaning of Janus: the root from which January was born.
Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary.
Honore de Balzac
Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius.
How we doin’?
When I look back on this year, there are many lenses through which I gaze. The one that says: “How are we doing?” And: “What did we do?” “What is working?” “What is not working?” “What will make a difference?” If I gently critique the last year while searching for the genius in it, what comes to the surface? I look at my relationship to my partner, my family members, my dearest friends, my work, and my colleagues. I am the common denominator in all of my relationships. What do I know about me that informs and guides my relationships?
I am the sum of what I consume. The time spent:
- in meaningful conversation
- moving my body
- resting and recovering
- enjoying foods for the pleasure and nutrition they offer
- learning new things
- pushing myself beyond my comfort zone
I am the sum of what I consume. How am I doing? How are you doing?
Statistically speaking
In 2024, More than three hundred and fifty of you attended an Imago workshop at the Imago Center. Some you were returning for a tune up. Others came in crisis. There was a lovely collection of newly engaged couples. We also saw lots of couples with toddlers and infants, struggling and longing to be connected. We saw couples across a spectrum of age, income, race, religion, and sexual orientation. We met in person and online.
What’s on your mind?
Reading our blog, you, our readers were most interested in finding a therapist, play, couples playing, woke culture, people pleasing, more play and parenting. Based on what you read, you have faced, depression, concerns for teen agers in your lives, ruptures in love and relationships, and a deep desire to be connected in grief and in joy.
What Grief, What Joy, Last Year
Looking at the year through the the lens of emotion,, what two faces of emotion figure most prominently for you in the last year? And how did that go for you? I will be the first to say that emotions are autonomic. The thinking we form based on the emotion is reflexive. Not BAD, just familiar. What does your thinking in the last year tell you about your state of being? My words for the year, are echoed in the topics you, dear reader, focused on in our blog: joy and grief.
I end another year with exhaustion, weariness, deep sadness, and many sprinkled moments of joy, delight, and ease. 2023 kicked my butt. I had no idea that 2024 was going to double down. And yet, here I am looking for the wisdom of the past and the hope of the unknown future. Planting seeds that WILL grow as well as I tend them. What did I learn in the latest life marathon? What are my takeaways from a year that saw me laugh and cry, dance and sing, curl up and rock, and hold hands in silence?
Learning
- I continue to learn that nothing too good or too bad lasts too long. Savor it all while it is here. Sit with the IS-ness of things.
- Acceptance may truly be the answer to all things.
- Be truly present a moment at a time. Practice doing one thing at a time.
- Look for what you long to see. Otherwise, you will see what you look for!
Trust that every sensation, each emotion, your autonomic thoughts, the universe’s messages, and every social connection has a purpose, a lesson, and opportunity. Truly learning these things means that I do not forget them. (Thank you for teaching me this, Hedy!) Practicing them with intention helps me to learn.
Physical joy/grief
The felt sense of things has always been ephemeral for me. This has been a year of greeting the physical experience of stuff. For me, this year, pleasure and anguish are the two faces of the physical. The catharsis of body wracking sobs and the tenderness of an enveloping hug. The physical sensation of feeling my feelings is a learned process. Welcoming them in, sitting with them, and letting them just be there. Feeling the birthplace in my body of each of these sensations. Movement and touch: Numbness, excitement, peace, alertness, energy, lethargy. Each one comes over me and can be breathed into my very molecules. And each has a message for me.
This being human is a guest house,
Jalaluddin Rumi
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Emotional joy/grief
As I practice, I endeavor to name my emotion words. According to Brene Brown there are 87 emotion/experiences that describe how we feel. Becoming literate in these words can actually be helpful to us as we live them. Discerning between the nuance of overwhelm versus stress, or disappointment rather than boredom, and contentment or gratitude helps us to move toward more descriptive thinking. Our thinking is what cues us to where we are. Joy is the warmth of love or friendship and could well be the answer to grief, if not the partner.
Mental joy/grief
Research proves that children learn more deeply and more quickly than adults, because children tend to learn in the environment of play. You were looking for ways to be more playful this past year. The excitement of learning or creating is an antidote to so much frustration, disappointment, and worry. Admittedly, if we could do better, we would do better. Learning happens when we feel free, safe, and connected. Practicing the act of curiosity, learning something new every day about yourself, your relationship and your partner, THIS leads to connection. In connection we can do anything!
Spiritual joy/grief
I am waiting to get a spiritual nod from my dear dad. I am hoping the universe will remind me again and again that he is here with me and always will be. And then I receive a kind note or gesture and I am moved instantly back to hole that is left in the fabric of my life. I know that there will be a time when I can look for the signs of his beingness here. For now I am trusting that the universe will continue to hold him in the wings for me until I am ready to practice seeing him anywhere. The peace of feeling connected to something greater is one that I have known before and will relearn. For now the grief I carry is bigger than the loss of my father, the rupture of our nation, the war wounds of the world, they all loom larger than life. I will look for the good when I can. I promise.
Social joy/grief
Turning towards one another in our distress is a the most effective pathway to connection and safety. Especially when the person I turn towards is the perceived source of my distress. In Chinese culture there is a proverb: “shared Sorrow is halved and shared Joy is doubled.” The delight of shared laughter or celebration is no less than the comfort of shared loss or sadness. Let us grieve together and dance en mass. I am learning to bring all of my Self to whatsoever I am doing. Knowing that if I am going through the dark days, others are too. And never, ever, do I have to go alone.
As I cast a critical eye on the last year and glean the genius it has to offer, I see a path forward for the next year and I know it to be a journey of lifelong learning. I make an intention, here and now:
- to look for something new that I can learn each day,
- to seek out nice surprises,
- to bring curiosity with me always,
- to play more,
- and to dance while I cry.
May you and yours have all that you dream and may your path be filled with delight in the highs and lows as they come. May you practice what you long to be. We are, afterall, what we practice.
In loving memory of a very good man, Everett M. Hoffman December 24, 1937-December 2, 2024.