Personal essays
Looking for three words to begin the next chapter
The Darkness
We’ve turned the yearly corner and the days are getting longer.
I don’t know why, but I felt the shorter days more acutely this year than ever before.
I usually wake up early with plenty of energy and get some amount of work done before taking a break to make some coffee.
But this past month there were days where I was still in bed after 7 as the light was just beginning to peak through.
I don’t know what that’s all about. It could be that we’re about to enter the third year of the pandemic but I’ve mostly worked from home for twenty years.
In a way it feels like a throwback to my younger self when I would lay in bed and listen to the radio for a half hour or so before heading to shower and get dressed. I listen to an assortment of podcasts and do the Times Mini, Knot Words, and other puzzles.
I think a bit about the sections of the book that I want to write today and an app or two that I want to get back to.
Maybe it’s a reluctance to leave my cold bed.
I’m not sure I’d even be thinking about it except a new year begins soon and that’s when I know I can put all of these bad habits behind me and start being the person I know I can be.
The New Year
I’ve never thought about it before. The new year begins about a week after the days have started to get longer. I wonder if that contributes to our feeling better about our future.
The days are literally getting brighter.
Although we live our life in moments, we remember them in chapters.
We look back at the year and remember how we spent the summer, our trip to some place, the holidays, and other events and markers.
Behavioral scientist Kate Milkman talks about why we are more likely to make big changes at the beginning of what we perceive to be a new chapter.
If we move, go to a new job, or make some concrete change we can choose to not take that person with those bad habits with us. We can become someone new.
New chapters can start at the beginning of the new year, on our birthday, the first day of the month, or each week.
Today is Tuesday. I’m not going to start a new diet today. It’s Tuesday. At this point I may as well keep eating, drinking, and not exercising.
I learned a new word from the great Susie Dent this week: Yule-hole. The word goes back more than 100 years to Scotland and is defined to be “the loosest notch in your belt that you must resort to after excessive eating and drinking.”
I will take note of my Yule-hole and resulve to start eating better and exercising on Monday at the start of the next week.
If I’m ambitious I’ll start Sunday at the start of the new year.
But I’m traveling soon and it makes no sense to start something new before my trip so…
So I wake up Sunday in the new year and Monday in the new week and I’m basically the same person I was the day before.
The Scarf
I made Maggie a lace scarf / shawl for Christmas.
I bought the yarn in November at a nice shop in Amsterdam and I started knitting it.
A week later I had less than a foot completed and knew I needed to get serious. I put in a couple of hours a day to knit the twelve rows that made up each repeated segment. Some days I committed to doing that twice.
My point is that we can find it in ourselves to make these commitments - but often it’s when we’re doing something for someone else.
I used to love going to the gym. During the pandemic I noticed just how gross other people are with shared spaces and thought I’d work out at home.
I did it for a while but find that I can more easily find two hours to work on something for someone else than a half hour to do something for myself.
Susie Dent’s Christmas word was “confelicity” which means “joy in the happiness of others.”
I love that word and embrace that feeling. I know people who don’t. There are plenty of people who are annoyed when others find happiness in something they think is stupid. Programmers who make fun of “sports ball” and people who enjoy spending time watching football or basketball. Their friends who make fun of the sci fi shows they love to watch.
If it makes you happy, and you don’t make me do it too - I can definitely find joy in your happiness.
The anticipation of that joy is why I will knit for hours for this scarf I’m going to give you.
Joy
Several of the podcasts I listen to talked about “Scroogenomics”.
If you spend $20 on a gift for me I will likely value that gift at a lesser amount - say $16 - and so there’s a waste of that $4 difference on the gift.
Maybe.
The argument is that you’d be better off just giving them the $20 and letting them get what they want.
And yet.
Something Kim did and Maggie does - is remember who gave them an article of clothing or a piece of jewelry and wear it when we get together.
There’s an added joy when the giver sees them enjoying their gift. I think it more than makes up the deficit.
But what about us?
I don’t know what the word is for it, but many of us don’t properly feel the joy in our own happiness.
We note the winter blizzard and record cold outside but don’t appreciate the home that protects us from those elements.
We feel the bleakness as the days get shorter but don’t feel the joy as we turn the corner and head for a new year with the days getting longer.
I don’t make new years resolutions. Each January I choose three words to guide me throughout the year.
Three words to begin my next chapter.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 144. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe