As we enter a new year there can be a pressure to get caught up in the call for ‘New Year, New You!’.

But the dark winter may in fact be calling for a gentler energy alongside a more natural desire to hibernate and take things slow.

Perhaps it is a time for intention and gentle enquiry, rather than brash ‘change it all up’ action. Think the blue glow of the moonlight, rather than the bright and harsh light of the sunlight.

One of my favourite quotes is from the American poet, Diane Ackerman, who wrote:

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just to the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well”.

What does it mean to live a life of width? Of breadth? As well as length?

SLOWING DOWN, PAUSING, NOTICING AND INCREASING PERIPHERAL VISION

A life of width may include slowing down time; pausing, breathing and noticing. 

Being narrowly focused can be good for getting things done and being effective. But sometimes the continual forward movement means I miss out on the experience, the opportunities for serendipity, and what is actually here now. 

The invitation might be to expand our senses into peripheral vision and listen to the sounds all the way around us – opening our ears. Quietening or slowing our brains. Really tasting our coffee. Smelling our dinner, feeling the texture of our clothes, and noticing clouds moving in the reflection on the window. 

There might be value in cultivating a meditation practice, not to explicitly relax or change ourselves, but to actually be here and sample all the fruits that life has to offer. To savour the rich meal and experiences on offer; including the good, the not so good, and the more challenging. 

Acknowledging the Places That Have Not Known Love

I first discovered Diane Ackerman’s quote in a wonderful (and much gifted) book called The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, by Francis Weller. He includes these words in his exploration of his Second Gate of Grief: ‘The Places That Have Not Known Love.’

This includes “the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives” (p.31).

To grieve and heal these banished parts of ourselves, Francis Weller suggests three moves including a shift:

• “from feeling worthless to seeing ourselves as wounded”
• “from seeing ourselves through a lens of contempt to one of a budding compassion”
• “moving from silence to sharing”

In his book, the quote inviting width of life follows under a section on “premature death”: the outcast parts of our souls that result in anxiety, depression and addiction.

These shadow figures also hold our passion and our energy, our vulnerability and our courage, our creativity and our aliveness.

As a recovering good girl and a people pleaser, my more messy, chaotic and complicated and bitchy sides are often hidden away. Perhaps a life of greater width includes embracing the more unapologetic side to my soul? 

As Carl Jung wrote: “I’d Rather Be Whole Than Good”.

 It feels risky. But doesn’t the alternative of being ‘good’ feel like a rather narrow life?

I have seen people invite a word to live into, and explore for 2023. I have decided my word is ‘unapologetic’. It feels suitably edgy and challenging, but also powerful. 

What word might you choose for 2023?

Physical Width – Taking Up Space

In thinking about width, I also think about the physical space that my body occupies and moves in. A fast walker, with a tendency to charge through my day in pursuit of a fixed destination, I can move like a small soldier, with my arms going back and forward.

What does it feel like to move into the sides of my body? 

It feels good to consciously move in other dimensions. To stretch my fingertips and arms as far as I can to the sides. To do yoga, to dance and move in the full space around me. Taking up space, no longer being tidy and restricted in my movements.

Perhaps 2023, could include an exploration of greater physical movement? Taking up and exploring the full space around us?

Other Dimensions? Depth?

In times that can sometimes feel superficial and surface, there is perhaps also a call to enquire into other dimensions too. What does it mean to live a life of depth, as well as width and length?

Living the Questions

And I don’t have any answers. As poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”