Happy New Year!
For those of you celebrating New Year’s at this time, perhaps your thoughts have drifted to the topic of new year’s resolutions or things you would like to change or continue to work toward. Perhaps your reflections have looked forward and back like Janus, the mythical king of early Rome who had two faces–one on the front of his head that looked forward and one on the back of his head that looked back (see link). Perhaps a combination of this double-looking, as well as time spent absorbing the present moments as they are has led you to a resolution or goal or continued commitment to something you’ve been practicing and aiming toward already.
Rather than new resolutions, I largely fall into the camp right now of continued perseverance with what is already on the go, perhaps with a few extra twists. I had the luxury of spending time over the past few days with friends at a cabin in the woods. I brought up the word conviviality in the context of a book I’ve been reading and enjoying. This led to a discussion of what the definition of conviviality actually is and one friend looking up the word on the dictionary on her mac laptop, to which she found: “[of an atmosphere or event] friendly, lively and enjoyable; [of a person] cheerful and friendly, jovial“. Another friend then summarized this as merriment. In my mental-emotional lexicon, I’ve held conviviality as involving nourishing time spent with excellent friends–perhaps over tasty food, drink, conversation, games–enjoyable, lively, friendly, and with lots of room also for the real challenges people face, including pain. Among those “resolutions” already on the go, I wish to continue to foster, celebrate, and inspire the spirit of conviviality.
You may have heard the expression, “go big or go home.” I want to emphasize here that there is nothing wrong with dreaming big. Indeed, dreaming big is something I whole-heartedly support. Nevertheless, I have been thinking about how sometimes people make new year’s resolutions that fall into the “go big” category, and of how sometimes the resolution’s largeness makes it too hard for the person to maintain, or even to begin: it’s largeness can be intimidating, even discouraging, and the person is not able to get their feet off the ground with it. It isn’t always this way, of course. Sometimes, going big works. Nevertheless, I’ve been revisiting the theme of valuing the small and thinking I would like to extend the invitation to myself and to you, to dream big, yes, and to make a “small resolution” that supports your dream; that is, to aim to make a small change first, then another small change, not a large one all at once.
As one example: perhaps you would like to get more exercise. Making a small resolution might be to commit to getting 5 more minutes of physical activity each day, which might mean walking to the end of the block or lane and back once or marching in front of the tv set on a few sets of commercials or walking up and down a few flights of stairs. It could mean making a goal of going to one fitness class per week instead of four, or swimming (or dancing, skating, running, snow shoeing, or anything else) two times per month. If you did any of these things, at the end of one year you would have either:
- gotten 1825 more minutes of physical activity, which equals almost 30.5 more hours simply by adding in 5 more minutes each day, or
- attended 48 fitness classes of your choosing minus 4 weeks over the year when you were unable to attend, or
- gone swimming, dancing, running etc 24 times over the year!
It seems to me that is significant. It counts. Not only that, if you are able to pick something small that is manageable, what you create is also something lasting–until you decide to make another change. Nothing has to be set in stone. We could take Stuart MacLean’s theme for the Vinyl Cafe here–”we may not be big, but we’re small”–and adjust it slightly to say, It may not be big, but it’s small. The small matters. It counts.
I preface this next bit by saying I have not yet read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell; however, it is a book that was one among the collective travelling library my friends and I created while at the cabin; one of the people there had brought it along. While browsing it, I came across the following:
We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly. (p. 11)
This made me think of examples like deciding to go to an event or activity and meeting someone there who ends up becoming a lover, or life-long partner, or best friend; the relatively small event that led to the creation of you and me and each and every other person you see. If I am recalling correcting, Malcolm Gladwell writes that we are trained to think that big changes only come from big events yet this is not always so. Small events, small changes, small things can also have a significant impact.
Remembering that there is nothing wrong with dreaming big, or making big changes or goals per se, in the spirit of also valuing and honing in on the small, is there a small change or resolution you might have made or be making? I would love to hear about these–my curiosity and interest is primed–and I’d love for others to be able to hear as well. If you are comfortable, please do share by adding a comment following this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment