To-Be

The waning days of summer are a confusing time for wardrobes. People don all kinds of combinations: Trench-coats and sandals, shorts and parkas, tank tops and fleece pants. It’s the time of year where you’re in between what was and what is to be.

While there are plenty of days of sunlight left, many outdoor movies and festivals to attend, and many barbecues to indulge in before summer truly ends, there is a comfort is knowing that the change in season is around the corner. I relish in the rain tapping at my window as I sleep at night and the almost-but-not-quite suffocating warmth of coffee shops full of wet scarves and seasonal drinks.

The transition from summer to autumn is special. it’s a time when we gear up to get out of holiday mode. When I was in school, there was a special feeling that came with the thought of reinventing yourself for a new year. Though the reinvention most of the time involved getting new jeans.

Transitions - any transitions - place us in a strange world between the nostalgia of old and the springy newness of what’s ahead. There come so many lasts which leave us silently and lightly mourning, while not knowing what’s quite ahead.

But that also happens to be the beauty of transitions. They are heavy with the unexplored and undesigned. They herald in new eyes and ears and doing things differently. Even if in the fall that simply means new soup recipes. We can revel in the idea that we will somehow act differently and embrace all of it wholeheartedly.

When we transition - seasons, relationships, our own being, we carry along the past with us, though it looks very different. We are taking with us, the sometimes-heavy somethings into what is to be. In doing that, we are asking our past to transform with us - please would you change as I change. To look just a little bit different, so we can make room for what hasn’t quite taken place. And sometimes the past cooperates. And sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes it’s better if it doesn’t.

This morning, I walked in the crisp late summer air to the library a few blocks from where I work to drop off a book. As I did, I recalled that this is the last time I’ll be walking to the library before I go away to get married. It seems inconsequential but in some ways profound: to think that the every day act will have somehow transformed into something else in a month’s time. The act itself won’t change. Everything around it might. Perhaps I’ll be picking up a book for my to-be husband. Perhaps he’ll have driven me there. Perhaps he’ll be working from nearby and we’ll stop for coffee. Perhaps, perhaps…

The to-be is undefined and sometimes unrefined - rough-hewn and itchy. And sometimes we mix up our personhoods in trying to define it before it is ready to happen. But just like the change in season, we ought to, I think, let it come slowly. We can wrap ourselves in its being when it arrives. Like a warm scarf on that first day of autumn when the chill is more or less here to stay, thank goodness.

Some things to think about:

Anne Lamott on Love, Despair and Change on Brainpickings

A cover of “Changes” by Seu Jorge

No Small Miracle

“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ”

— Mary Oliver

Every April, we congregate in the evenings for seven days to say special prayers for those around the world who are in difficulty. We do this twice a year. During that one week, the jamatkhana parking lot is generally quite full as lots of people come through to take part in the collective act of remembering God. This year was a special year as the week fell close the holy month of Ramadhan. Ramadhan is observed by millions of people around the world through acts of prayer and charity that recommit us to the faith of Islam. So the month felt heavy with meaning.

On my first day, I parked my car in my near usual spot, having arrived early enough to beat the large crowd. In one of the landscaped planters nearby, I noticed a sitting goose. She was in quiet repose, having placed all the weight into the ground. She wasn’t moving very much.

The next day was the same. Only, someone had gone ahead and placed a porcelain bowl of water in front of her.

And the next day, orange cones had appeared around her as a warning sign to those in the parking lot to respect her space.

She was in prime nesting season.

And so for every day that week, I would walk by (not too close. Canada geese are the testiest of creatures, especially when they’re nesting) and see her sitting. Sometimes she would be adjusting herself. Other times, an intrepid crow would be helping itself to the water from her bowl.

I named her Malek. Because we must name the things that we see to give them meaning. It’s a name that’s found several generations before mine. And in Arabic, it means “owner.”

So our visits continued for a full month, or maybe more. After the week of prayers, I would visit every Friday. Not much about her condition changed.

Then one day, in late May, a gander appeared in the parking lot. His slow amble around the perimeter of the nest told us that something was about to happen. We were close to delivery and he was making sure that nothing would disturb the upcoming birth.

I am not quite sure when the goslings were born. But one day I arrived at prayers only to find that the water bowl was gone. And all that was left was pieces of shell. A friend sent me a video soon after. Malek had given birth to five goslings. They clambered on top of each other noisily, trying to get their parents’ attention.

But that was it. And no more.

Every single day, we have the opportunity to witness miracles. Some of them, our own. Others, belonging to other people. And still others, belonging to the natural world. It is no miracle that we’re here today. And no miracle that I was tied to the narrative of something outside of me.

I invested my time in the witnessing of something else’s miracle. And that fuelled my happiness. And for a short time endowed my weekly visits to prayers with extra meaning. I was witness to he world’s natural order.

And in the end, it’s always temporary. I’ll never see Malek or her geese again (I wish I had a chance to name them too!), nor would I recognize if I did. It is up to us to find those pockets in which we can view the world slightly differently. Where we can name and create meaning for ourselves. Where we can connect to every greater and ever smaller. These areas in between is where life’s dull thrum becomes a vibrant heartbeat; the pulse of which assures us that we’re not alone.

Some more on miracles and things:

Mary Oliver on Happiness - Brainpickings

How to be invisible by Akiko Busch - New York Times

Nature. Beauty. Gratitude by Louie Schwarzberg - TED

What a 9,000 year-old spruce taught me by Rachel Sussman - Nautilus

Paying Attention to the Thinkers

“Poirot,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking.’
’An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.’”

— Agatha Christie

On a couple of different occasions over the last few weeks I’ve been speaking to friends and family about people we know whose ambition is palpable. They want what our view of success looks like and they are outwardly motivated and loud enough to ask for it, whether this means creating the kinds of relationships that propel them to greater heights or loudly stating their own success.

Part of me admires these people. To be what I would see as brazen in going after what you want is not an inherently wrong thing to do. In fact, it’s entirely commendable. But as is entirely part of my nature, I can’t help but look at the missing pieces.

Just today, I was listening to Susan Cain’s now famous TED talk on the power of introverts as part of an internal work training program I’m doing. In it, she mentions the switch in the early 20th century for a North American tendency to admire the man of contemplation to the shift to admiring the man of action (obviously, it was men because women were too busy fainting from restrictive clothing). This shift in the pattern on who got the limelight heralded in by the self-help books that lauded charismatic salespeople. Hence, the man of contemplation was driven to the fringes of society, relegated largely to ivory towers and quiet laboratories.

Our almost pathological need to measure action and momentum is leaving us in some ways, much worse off. It drives action for action sake. I’d venture that it also contributes to the many mental health issues that continue to surface in our personal lives. After all, if you feel compelled never to sit down and think and to always act, how do you recalibrate? How do you synthesize what you know to create new solutions and perspectives?

Are we giving people enough time to think? For me, the answer is a resounding no. We don’t. We encourage people to fill their days with movement. Then, everyone falls into bed exhausted and does it again the next day.

When we give people the benefit of thinking, of the time to think, the solutions we get back are, well, thoughtful. They aren’t hurried along because they need to happen yesterday. They consider more aspects than what’s currently on the table. We aren’t driving the process externally, we’re growing it internally. As individuals and within groups, having the chance to turn over ideas, to sleep on them for a day, gives us the benefit of so much more perspective than we’d ever know was possible

In my work, like the work of many others, I use two major skills: management and creativity. One skill gathers, collates, synthesizes, researches and coordinates. The other messages, connects, sparks. The bridge between these two skills is time. Time to think. I need time to take what I have, tease it apart, turn it on its head and find new ways of presenting it.

Thought and thinking lies at the very heart of human activity. It’s through contemplation that we have our greatest science, literature, art, politics, philosophy. Thought is what has created great leaders.

Action is a very necessary part of the world. It’s how things get done around here. It’s what literally keeps us ticking along. But we have a vastly sophisticated mechanism that helps us take the best actions. And so it behooves us to pay attention to the thinkers. They’re not the loudest people there, or even the ones driven by action. They are the ones that will take the space to amplify what works and perhaps to start the first spark that leads us to ignite.

Some things to think about:

How do you maximize your tiny, short life by Neil Paricha

If you can’t have fewer meetings, have better ones on IDEO

Five invaluable work tips for introverts on IDEO

Hannah Arendt on the Life of the Mind on Brainpickings

This lovely little poem by Ame Dyckman

Neat.

Every year, Apartment Therapy has the January Cure. It’s a month-long challenge where participants undertake the task of cleaning their homes inside and out. From small, measured changes like cleaning out one drawer in 10 minutes to larger tasks like reorganizing the kitchen, the challenge offers you an opportunity to re-evaluate your own space and see it in a whole new light.

This year, the Cure (as it’s lovingly referred to by participants) happens to coincide with Netflix’s new slew of shows around home organization. Specifically the rise of and continued obsession with Marie Kondo’s Life-changing magic of tidying up.

When the tiny, neat little book first came out, it sparked a debate all over the internet and on both sides of the fence. The most vocal critics were those people who simply refused to tidy up their libraries, according the KonMari method. Others wondered what it means to have possessions spark joy. And others yet, were completely taken by the neat folding methods and spotless surfaces. I read the book and then promptly gave it away the next time I decluttered.

The show (and I’ve admittedly watched the entire thing) revolves around American families who are overrun with mess. Marie goes into their home, advises them to go through their things and get rid of a lot of it. At the end, we see the satisfying (to me, and I’m sure to a lot of people) results of clean spaces.

Part of the reason, I think that people struggle with tidying up is how deeply our external environments are tied to our inner states of mind and our histories.

There are plenty of people out there who write about the immigrant experience as one of having little and keeping everything that was useful. There’s certainly that need for a lot of people. You never know when you’ll need something. It’s likely why so many of us keep old yogurt containers for storage. Utility simply can’t be underestimated.

But it also goes the other way sometimes. The need to rid yourself of things to make your existence lighter because you can’t be in one place for long. I mostly only have myself to use as the example here.

Before the age of 10, I had moved over a dozen times. More often than not, it meant starting in a whole new place all over again, with only suitcases. This meant I only took a few meaningful things with me as we moved. When we made the final (almost) and largest move to Canada, I took just a few things with me: a doll my aunt had given me, a glass tea-set, a few books.

My family has since then, mostly led a fairly spare life. We declutter often (I have already given away two bags of clothes in this new year), we don’t get attached to things very often, and we mostly “make do.” I’ve inherited the “make do” gene from my mother and for the longest time had only an 8-inch frying pan until it got too absurd not to have a real one.

The impulse to sanitize and control my environment is strong. When I’ve had a bad day or am waiting on news, my first thought is to grab the vacuum or the Clorox wipes and clean something. Anything. It’s become my way of exerting some agency over my environment when I can’t control my inner anxiety.

Perhaps there is a luxury to being able to get rid of things. A lot of articles have talked about the privilege of it as well. You have to have things in the first place. And the show is a really strong example of people being buried in their own privilege.

But for those of us for whom excess doesn’t denote luxury so much as heaviness, the show has another appeal. I’ve enjoyed it, not because all the things that you’re left with spark joy (this is, again, a privilege, to be able to get joy from your things). But because now there’s a psychological levity. When you get rid of all the stuff, you only have yourself. You have to deal with what’s left behind and sometimes, the people with too many things don’t recognize that at the bottom of it, is just who they once were. When you’re not hiding behind walls of unfiled papers, you have to deal with your trauma, your relationships and most of all, your own mind.

I now live in a beautiful home that I bought myself. It offers me the permanence I didn’t have in the first decade of my life. It’s filled with too many of the things I love and plenty of things I have because they’re useful. As I was going through one of the January Cure exercises of decluttering my living room, I put all my knick-knacks into one bag and decided to live without them for a while. There’s always a mild sadness with putting those sorts of things away.

But I realized that if I had to - or better yet - if I chose to, I could still live without those things without feeling lack. It has little to do with joy, and much more to do with survival. And, I think, there’s a comfort in knowing that.

Some things to think about if you’re thinking of cleaning house:

The January Cure on Apartment Therapy

On steeping bags of tea, twice by my good friend Sameer Vasta

A bit about Marie Kondo’s new show

The case of giving away your books on Quartz

The oppressive gospel of minimalism on NYT

In Reverence of Silence

“Silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”

— Rumi

On New Year’s Day, my partner and I decided to go for a walk at a park near my house. The day was a cool one but much warmer than many other winters we’ve had recently. The park is a local city park with many trails that weave in and out, meeting at different junctures. We took the perimeter route around the park, which leads you on a gravel path through groves of trees. Water ran in small rivulets throughout the walk, with the overhead greying winter trees spiking upwards toward the sky, some barren and others evergreen.

We talked and laughed and played games along the way. But we also walked in silence, only hearing the crunch of the ground under our feet and the distant call of winter birds (mostly the crows stick around).

The silence, even in nature is striking. Devoid of man’s artificial sounds, your senses are only filled with the quiet that weaves itself through the trees.

I’ve been thinking a lot about silence lately. Coming off of a busy holiday season, which was filled with sounds of joy and laughter from family and friends, silence has become a bit of a stranger.

I recently discovered a podcast on BBC Radio 3 called “Slow Radio.” The 15-minute excerpts are meant to take you away from your normal existence and put you in places where slow and silence and solitude are the order of the day. You can walk along the British countryside, wander through winter forests and listen to sounds of bygone eras.

My favourite one is a five-part series in which Benedictine monks talk about life in the monastery. They talk about the importance of silence in their practice. There is one part of the episode where the monk describing silence references St. Benedict’s idea of the “silence for a purpose.” This is the type of silence that is necessary for us to create, pray, remember, read or even just think. It is my favourite passage because of the sheer delight that this order takes in reveling in the silence that brings them close to their creator.

We have become afraid of silence. In his book, “Solitude” Michael Harris describes in detail the fear of silence and solitude that is now the course of everyone’s lives. Technology, though sometimes the catch-all culprit, has a job that specifically promises connection and distraction. In this way, we are never alone. We are never silent. And even if we are, we aren’t for very long. It’s too uncomfortable. We fidget and fret when left alone with ourselves. The inevitable buzz of the phone will call us urgently back.

Yet we crave the silence that we are unwilling to observe. From slow food movements to yoga to silent retreats, we want it so badly, we create entire movements in its honour, only then to fear our own creation. A multi-million dollar industry will have you sitting on the floor trying to silence the clanging of your dear brain, followed by a vegan lunch.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we see silence as a removal, a negative space that is lacking. If we are not doing or talking, we are simply giving into the vacuum that threatens to consume us. In a noisy world, silence has become an enemy because it offers us nothing. And we will choose anything but that.

But silence is a necessary friend. It is the wellspring of the creation of the world. Everything in fact, comes from nothing.

Musicians will know that the balance of silence and sound are both equally important in the creation of music. As a performer myself, there is a moment, mostly right after a piece ends, when the conductor’s arms are still up and the sound is reverberating in the space as it comes to an end. That short silence is filled with everything that came before it - breath, meaning, harmony - before it’s released into the world. It’s my favourite part of the piece, almost always.

We are trying to make meaning of our worlds. But we layer sounds and narratives on each other, hoping that the more there is to sift through, the more we’ll have to figure out what that meaning really is. But like many of the most prolific creators in the world, silence is a necessary ingredient to creating meaning. Thoreau, Dickens, Rowling all revere the silence of being with your thoughts and I’m happy to take their word (hah!) for it.

It’s still early in the new year and we aren’t completely encompassed by the hum-drum buzz of our everyday lives. As Maria Popova said on her ultra-popular, super nerdy blog “build pockets of stillness into your life.” I plan on enjoying moments of stillness in my day - whether it’s my early morning coffee or writing or reading or simply stepping into an empty yoga studio on the weekends. You don’t have to believe in a higher power or even live in solitude to benefit from silence. You simply have to take a minute every day to step into silence, let it envelope you like fragrance, and breathe it in.

A few things to help you meditate on the meaning of silence:

The Origin and Cultural Evolution of Silence on brainpickings

Slow Radio on BBC 3

Paul Goodman on the Nine Kinds of Silence on brainpickings

Solitude: A singular life in a crowded world by Michael Harris

This is your brain on silence on Nautilus

Adapt

“The more you adapt, the more interesting you are.”

— Martha Stewart

We have all played that childhood game of walking along a narrow beam of wood. That beam lines the garden plot of our childhood home. Or perhaps it’s an abandoned train track (I hope). Or maybe you were bored and found a piece of wood lying near a park. The game was to walk along the beam without falling off - to rebalance yourself when it changed. Perhaps it was slippery from old moss and rain like the one in my childhood garden. Or it was uneven, punctuated with nails or of old uneven surface.

You’d walk along the wood, almost stumbling along. Sometimes you’d steel yourself to gain your balance and put your arms out like a cross until you stopped wobbling. Other times, you’d realize that you’d never quite be able to get back to balance. So you’d run across the beam as fast as you could to get to the end without falling off.

You might have raced with siblings or neighbourhood friends to see who could make it from one end to the other without falling off or letting their foot touch the ground.

This is how, in our own sneaky childhood way, we learned to change our foothold to meet our surroundings. This is how our brains learned to assess when we’d have to move faster or when we’d have a moment to slow down and regain our balance.

For 2019, I’m choosing the word Adapt as my word of the year.

My tendency has always been to hold on to everything for dear life. Anything that could be used to pad out a safety net for myself is something I would keep, even when it became useless. This isn’t to say I have an inability to change - it simply means that it’s never been easy.

Part of the strength of being able to be steadfast to my own truth is that I’m fully and completely aware of the person I am and why I became her. But that’s never the entire story. When we hold fast to the only things we know, we shut ourselves out of the opportunity to know other parts of ourselves.

I’ll be the first to admit that I get bogged down more and more the older I get. Sometimes there are just too many things to do, not enough focus to do them, and too many people who are counting on you to be just so. But on days when I’m sitting by myself I realize it’s because I’ve accumulated so much without letting some of it go.

In order to journey forward, I’ll use this year to adapt my load to the next journey. Some habits may have worked in the past, but they don’t work now. And rather than resent their exit, it’s perhaps better to wave goodbye and make room.

Life though, has a funny way of putting you through the things you never imagine for yourself - for better and worse. And in the end the difference between the ingenious solution and the part where we fall short is our ability to adapt. Not all of it is going to be good and not all of it is going to enable us to think beyond our own capabilities. Some things in life are a downright slog. A breeze, a noise in the woods, your own thoughts can cause you to lose focus for just one second. Before you know it, you’re on the ground again. But even when the going gets tough and we can’t regain our footing, we can run toward the end or step off for a moment. That’s adapting too. It’s knowing that you just have to stumble through until you’re on safe ground again.

The ground isn’t that far away and it will always rise up to meet you until you’re ready to hop back on. And that’s comforting.

Big, Messy

Change is afoot. Life has a funny way of putting us on the path and suddenly turning off in another direction. I know this more than I ever have before.

You see, I’m getting married. Next year. I had for a long time thought of it outside the realm of possibility for me. If you are my mother, you’d interpret that to be a negative comment. It isn’t. I was simply happy with the life I had built - it contains family and friends, a job I’m good at, plenty of books and music.

But then of course all that changed in a matter of months and now I’m thinking about seating charts and cake flavours.

The transition to committing to another person has some growing pains associated with it. I had dedicated all my life and energy into building a career and a life that I, alone, occupied. There was plenty of space for others, but it was temporary. And when you’ve signed on for solitude, there are other things that you discount by default. Like holidays with inlaws, joint grocery lists and children.

I have, and am still grappling with how these developments mean not only a shift in my time and energy, but a shift in intent. My babies so far have been my writing and my music. But real life babies mean upending my whole life to make room for messes and nurturing. For sleepless nights and car seats and sticky fingers and days at the park.

I’ve thought about it for so long and I simply could not start to wrap my head around who I would be as this person. She doesn’t exist in the way she needs to. Not yet anyway. My intent is beginning to shift but the old, solid reliable part of me is trying desperately to hang on.

But your career! You can’t have children - they’ll ruin your carpet and eat your orchids!

I love my brain but it is loud when it doesn’t want to change.

I recently watched a TEDx talk by Clay Christensen called “How will you measure you life?” In it, he talks about the investments that we make in our lives. We look for short term, hierarchical gains that put us at the top of organizational charts. These are, in the grand scheme of things, easier investments. Results are more immediate. You either get the promotion or you don’t. Where we sometimes are remiss in putting in our efforts is into the parts of our lives where the gains aren’t apparent for many years. The daily grind of raising children is not joyful. Kids are sticky and whiny and they act up. It’s only, in Christensen’s words, 20 years later that you can look and say, we raised good kids.

These are the investments - the ones that don’t give us immediate gains - that we have to be brave enough to invest in. Frankly, we don’t know what we’re signing up for. It’s a blind exercise, but one that might be infinitely more fulfilling than a promotion.

I am slowly realizing that these are investments that I simply haven’t made - by choice or chance - until now. When I talk about the intent of it all, I am referring to a very particular fact: That all of my life, the skills I have gained, the work I have done, the mental hurdles I’ve overcome are all in preparation for a bigger life. It’ll be a messier, busier life, but it will be much larger than I have imagined for myself.

Right now, my one bedroom apartment is occupied by me, an unwieldy bookshelf and plants that keep being gifted to me. I think of it as a bit of a metaphor for my heart and my mind. It has been my sanctuary - a place of almost spiritual context in my mind. All along, there has only been room for me. But now, I’m staring at an extra pair of shoes, a favourite coffee mug that isn’t my coffee mug, a baseball cap on top of my bookshelf. In the same way, I am allowing others to occupy space in my mind and my life and considering the possibility that one day there may be more room to be made. And of course, life is richer because of it. Things aren’t as orderly, but there is also laughter and another person wandering through the rooms.

It’s a scary prospect. But as we learn in psychology, anxiety and excitement are different sides of the same coin. Perhaps it’s time for this big, messy, brave life now.

The Year of Nurture (Part 2)

Very recently, I read a book called "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry" by Neil dGrasse Tyson. In it, he explores the formation of the universe - how just the right conditions create what we now have. Through abundance and lack, the universe struck a perfect balance so that our little planet could harbour life. 

At the end of that book, I marveled really at the ability of the universe to just course correct and right itself through a slow process that takes more time than we can even fathom in our heads. Millions of years to perfect and fine-tune.

I have been trying to apply this concept of taking time to nurture this year. I recently found myself in for a community garden plot just down the way from where I am. It's a lovely little hub that's hidden in the woods, close to the inlet.

I have never really thought of gardening as a hobby. Allergies and a general desire to be indoors mostly kept me away from it. But this year, I decided that I could use a little more zen in my life. I've always been good with plants. Things grow when I'm around. Credit to the things of course - they survive in spite of my best efforts to ignore them and how little I actually know about gardening. In a way, we are all made for inhospitable environments.

Back to gardening. I thought I would use my hidden green thumb to grow a few things. In the shockingly calm early morning, I generally make my way down to the plot. I spend most of my time weeding and turning over soil. I check on the few plants I have right now - mostly I'm focusing on herbs and keeping things alive. (The lavender bush disappeared last week - it may have gotten up and walked off.) Then I wander around and admire other people's gardens. There are all manner of happy, healthy fauna from bright blooming marigolds (good for pest control) to early summer strawberries, just starting to turn red to that hardy strongman of verdant plants we call kale.

I'm learning things too. Tending a garden requires patience. Your peppers don't sprout in a week. And not all things will grow. Some aren't simply meant to. And others, you haven't learned to take care of properly. You can't compare your work to the work of others. Different environments just breed different products. A little more sun, and you have bright early tomatoes. A little less sun and they'll need some coaxing.

It helps to be generous too. People who cultivate these plots share with each other. We are all tending to the same earth after all and there are only so many chives you can consume in one week. There is also, only so much you can do to control the environment around you. If the squirrels get to your zucchini first, then you'll have to concede.

Right now, going down to the garden on the weekend is a small joy. Between the butterflies that roam around, the distant sound of water lapping at the shores, and the ever-evolving surprises on my small plot of land, I've found some peace. It's not perfect. But it's peace nonetheless.

That's really what nurturing seems to be about. It's a slow cultivation and a balance of states that allows us to create life. Or coax it out. Some things will survive the harsh winters. Others, despite your best efforts will inevitably fail. We ourselves, grow in the same way, at the mercy of those who tend to us, and the whims of the world around us. But at the end of the day, the universe that's contained in this garden and within us finds a way to right itself.

The Year to Nurture

So much for ease. It was the word I chose last year, which turned out to be anything but. Big life changes. As usual. Every five years or so, my life turns itself on its head. By some miscalculation, I forgot that 2017 would be that year. And so it went. With not much more ease than I had pictured. But it was all in good stead.

2017 pulled me in a million different directions from reorienting my career to figuring out what I wanted from my relationships to giving myself to the many things that occupy my time. It's always when I look for some time to take a breath that this vacuum is filled up again with activity.

And I'm grateful for it. All the work I've done personally and professionally is paying off in sometimes subtle and sometimes massive ways. Forward motion is good.

I suppose it wasn't for naught. I suppose the ease really came from my ability to handle the changes without feeling the great compression of stress that these changes usually bring. But my brain was most definitely tired out from being graceful about it all. There are days where my mind simply ached from being tossed from one thing to another.

Though I don't always align with my word of the year, I endeavour to come up with one anyway. If for no other reason, than it helps me look back after the year to put the pieces of my life into some sort of coherent picture (with or without the word). A sort of mental jigsaw, if you will.

This year is no different. Over the last year, I've read up a lot on focus and simplifying. With all that's happening in the news and all the changes in my life, I found myself craving space to do the things I actually want to do like sleep or go for walks or not check work emails on the weekend. Initially, I wanted to pick "Focus" as my word of the year. But it seemed to clinical and didn't align with the emotional growth I've tended to this past year. While laser focus is a great thing, it's not where my energy currently sits.

So I'm naming 2018 the year to nurture.

Nurturing for me this year, means paring my life down to the essentials. To the things that I want to grow and I wish would flourish. It is a year of giving due care to things that will serve me well. Enough with the mini-projects, the one-offs and bright shiny distractions. Enough with the inability to sit on my hands when yet another tempting offer comes my way. Not this year.

This year I want to give my energy to three main things: To my relationships (familial, collegial), to my health (so my mind and body can come together in a way that serves me and those around me) and to learning (so that I'm feeding my ever-hungry mind good nutritious things). I've decided that everything outside of the realm of these three will merit serious consideration before getting a yes.

Sometimes to pare down and concentrate your energies on things that matter is more important because it is from that growth that everything else stems. To be surrounded by the strength of your community, to feel in your own spirit, and to find the world a curious place are critical to your own success.

No mantras. No hacks. No wheeling and dealing.

Just growing. Just nurturing.

Bred in Bone

“It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you.”

— Nigel Slater

There are three main things that the women in my family share almost unequivocally: a fine-tuned sense of smell; a glacially slow metabolism; and a deep abiding love of bread. My deepest and strongest memories of food have always been intimately linked with all things doughy, crusty, plush and slightly yeasty.

My earliest recollections of bread are memories of my grandmother (my nani). I remember spending my afternoons hovering around her as she prepared rotli (Indian flat bread) for the evening's dinner. Her deft flick of the wrist rolling out perfect, flat rounds. The toasty smell of cooked dough permeating through her clothes and the kitchen. It was almost as if her soft, plush figure was entirely made of the same substance - out of perfect white flour and a little bit of oil and water. She would, of course, give me the tiniest rotli, covered in ghee, sprinkled with sugar. I would always eat it far too quickly, unable to contain the desire to overwhelm my senses.

Bread is and has always been a deeply sensual food. It demands that we give it our entire attention and demands that we take risks for it. To rely on ever so slight changes in temperature to activate the yeast is to put yourself wholly in the hands of fate itself. The kneading of dough, the fragrance that starts to snake its way through the house, the sound of that first crackle of breaking crust. I can't think of any other food that is so beguiling, so seductive. 

The act of making it is often passed on through families, with special recipes and techniques. My own family is no exception. Because I'm afraid of yeast, the task of baking has fallen squarely on my mother and sister and I adore and ravenously consume just about anything they put in front of me. From my mother's caraway-spotted naan to my sister's layered gooey cinnamon buns, the joy of eating with my family is entirely predicated sometimes on eating various combinations of flour, fat and liquid. 

To love bread is to first love the very basic part of what it means to be human. The earliest civilizations cooked things up that resembled bread. It has sustained communities around the world. There is a reason we "break bread" with others as an act of camaraderie and well wishing. There is a reason why it figures so highly in important events such as weddings (what is cake afterall, but a sweet type of bread?) Jesus fed a multitude with loaves of bread and not carrot sticks. It is often in some form one of the first things we eat, whether it's softened in milk or comes in some other form. It lies at the heart of our understanding that those who love us will feed us and sustain us in many other ways. It is inseparable from human emotion and from our psychological states.

In a society that sometimes quickly forgets its roots, the relationship with bread has become complicated, tenuous and risky. What once was heart and hearth of our daily lives has become much maligned and seen as dangerous. What once sustained us and was the centre of how we survived has become a fringe product for those who don't care about their well-being. I feel sad for those people who choose not to eat bread (which in my book is entirely different from those who simply can't eat it). I would never try to convince them otherwise. But I do ask myself what else, about themselves they might be forgetting. To me they are missing out on a visceral joy of slathering a slice of french bread with butter and then licking up all the crumbs without reserve. 

I will always believe that my love of bread was bred in bone through my nani. In my mind, she is often a tableau. A woman wearing a light homemade cotton frock, sitting at the kitchen table, dipping buttered bread into her chai. Bread filled in for meals. It was her lunch, her after dinner snack if she was hungry, and most definitely her breakfast. As she aged and succumbed to Alzheimer's, it was often the only thing she would eat. For many people with dementia, repetitive behaviours are par for the course. She would make tea and eat slices of bread over and over because she didn't remember having eaten. And bread was her go-to. It has been all her life, and the continued to rely on it to offer her comfort when much else had faded from memory.

Still. When I sprinkle my own thin layer of sugar over rotli after a long week at work, I think of her.