Reflections for the New Year / Journal Prompts
Quote for December
A Map to Get Lost - The perfect journey into the New Year
Watching
Reading
Is Wabi-Sabi our 2023 theme?
Poem
Is less or more the natural choice and why that’s important
The Ikigai Journey by Garcia and Miralles, is a worthy read as we close old periods and step into new ones with the New Year. (Whilst most of us like to do this with the Calendar Year, not all of us need to do it on this schedule. Always open your hands to feel the timing of your life and honour that.) In the book, they discuss Professor Phil Daniels’s Stop, Keep and Start Approach. A simple tool to transition from one period in our life to another.
What should I STOP doing?
What should I KEEP doing?
What should I START doing?
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
A Map to get Lost1
I have pondered maps over 2022. From a map to life, a map of ourselves and now I cannot help but wonder what a map to get lost would look like. Getting lost to rejuvenate and reclaim myself feels like nourishment right now.
To get lost, we need to consider what part of us we are ready to leave behind. What is the good kind of lost we seek? Also, are you looking for this in a physical part of the world, as in, would you like to hike so far you feel lost from the daily grind? Or, do you mentally want to check out for a while, say in a good book or in painting something or making music? Grab a sheet of paper and write LOST in one corner and HERE NOW in another and see what comes out as you create a journey between them.
Something pulled at me to research, drawing a map for getting lost. I joyfully stumbled across a course you can actually take on drawing a map to get lost - check out the footnotes.2
Watched
Elvis by Baz Luhrmann was certainly an eye-opener into his life. Elvis’s music isn’t something I seek out, but stories of other lives I always humble myself with as with most, and especially Elvis’s, there was more pain than you might imagine at a glance.
Book worth mentioning
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce was a delight to read. It’s a coming of age at the other end of life in a turn that shows how we try to make sense of all we did and didn’t do as we continue to put one foot in front of the other. I cannot wait for the movie (Due out in March) and feel Jim Broadbent, who is cast as Harold, was born to play the part.
Wabi-Sabi
A Japanese term that highlights an appreciation of natural beauty, especially where a visible passage of time is seen. It is also about using what we have and living in tune with our environment, being nature, seasons, and the people in our lives. It accepts the natural cycle of growth and decay our world is of and embraces the ebbs and flows and imperfect journey along. It sees that nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. Yet it inspires us to make art out of our life as we dedicate ourselves to what practices we choose, doing them with pure attention.
Learning about this in 2022, I am inspired to embrace wabi-sabi as my theme for 2023. It aligns so well with the year I become 40 and at a personal time where find learning about natural beauty more freeing and opening.
Poem
I WILL, I MUST
Nothing sparkles like night-time showers
and nothing laughs quite like flowers
and on this day from dawn till dusk
I will enjoy it. I will, I must.
What do you do?
When I jumped into the shower, the water was a little too cool—tell me in that moment, do you turn the hot water up or the cold down? (put it in the comments below, I am keen to see if one choice or another is more common).
I choose MORE hot water. As I did this I realised that reducing the cold would have been more effective—this may be particular to my shower where the cold has more power once both are on. As I showered, I wondered about this incorrect rash decision and if I was more prone to add more when things aren’t quite right rather than take something away because this last solution is my preferred.
I would prefer to take something away, as that can aid clarity. The less there is to focus on, the more easily you can focus. Keep adding and overwhelm is all I can imagine.
“When things in your life aren’t adding up, start subtracting.”3
“Less is more” is a quote that has been around since 1947 when it was adopted by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and 2500 years earlier Lao Tzu wrote, “To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.”
“Draw a map to get lost.” Yoko Ono, 1964
Text from : https://girot.arch.ethz.ch/courses/elective-courses/fs2020-topology-draw-a-map-to-get-lost
We follow Yoko Ono’s contradictory instructions and explore the tension between orientation and disorientation in the map. Since the medieval itineraries of pilgrims, we have been using cartographic orientation tools. Even today, we rely on the fact that maps depict realities, while at the same time, we are wandering as blue dots in the labyrinth of Google Maps. What does a map show? And what does it hide? What claim to truth does it formulate? In this elective, we will explore these questions and deepen our knowledge with a selection of texts on the history, meaning, and purpose of cartographic representations. Ultimately, the students themselves become cartographers: they will survey the territory according to their own rules and create a map that challenges our sense of orientation.
All photos by myself taken at Russell Falls, Tasmania, Australia.
Couldn’t find the author of that one. One deep, dark web hole.
I turn the cold down, as it is more powerful than our hot.
Love the many different ways you allow inspiration into your life, Ta. I love the Japanese idea of fixing cracks with gold, and making a feature of the repair. I agree with Leonard Cohen's lyric: the cracks are where the light gets in - be they in things or our hearts.
I've made it a practice over the years to allow myself to "get lost".....such as sense of freedom as long as you don't have someone to meet at a certain time.