Everything All At Once

It all comes at once. The happiness co-mingled with fear and anxiety underneath. Or joy for a friend’s achievement and in an instant, berating oneself with should haves and could haves. All at once, it’s all there mixed up, jumbled, and waiting to be untangled.

Every year this week rolls around. The one in the wee days of the calendar, bringing on the pressure and expectation and all the things we didn’t do in 2017, but SWEAR we’re doing in 2018. We’re only 5 days in from the day we (collectively) were deliciously optimistic about life. Reveling in a new year ahead of us and now, here.we.ARE.

We see proclamations on social of all the new habits, resolutions, goals, and things. Being shouted so loudly.

But it’s one post with no shouting that bore the most significance.

Yesterday on Instagram there was a post from a woman (a friend) I know and admire. She revealed how truly happy she is in her work and in her relationship, but confessed that as she scrolls through the little squares representing other’s lives, she admits she spent much of the past year focusing on what she doesn’t have. Scrolling and wondering why she doesn’t have what others do, wondering what’s she’s doing wrong, and wanting these things for herself.

Then she went on to say she will be focusing on spending this year looking into her own eyes and life and accepting it for all it is. Whatever it is.

I’m still thinking about her words, transparency, and willingness to share it with everyone else scrolling the squares. We’re 5 days in to 2018 and this post meant more than any other tweet, article, listicle, post, update, or story I’ve seen this year.

Because I so much of myself in her post. And I appreciated the simplicity of the intention. Not a to-do list or a resolution or a goal. But a want. And when a want is powerful, that’s all you need.

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