start close in
a tiny new year's ritual
What is on your list? You know, the mental list of all the burning, better ambitions you have for the new year. You want to make more than $10,000 after taxes. You want to take on more coaching clients, behaving clients. You want to simultaneously take yourself more seriously and less seriously. You want to quit reminding your children to shower. You want to shave your legs above the knee. You want to not hate your life or, at the very least, think about it less. Either will do.
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
What is the step you don’t want to take? You know, the step that if you took it might make all the other burning, better ambitions possible, if not absurd. You don’t want to stop. (You do but you don’t, not yet, later.) You don’t want to close the screen, or the cupboard with the cleaning supplies. You don’t want to sit long enough to tolerate the undoneness of it all. You don’t want to risk the shame, the grief, the joy, even, of your failed plans. You don’t want to risk the silence, its belligerent noise.
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.
What is the ground you know? Because you know some things. You know when a wintry mix arrives in January that slaps your bedroom window like rubber strips at a car wash, it is reminding you that no season—good or bad—lasts forever. You know that God talks to you and Jesus is difficult and the Holy Spirit is always. You know that you never feel so seen as when you read good writing and write good writing. You know that your question is the answer.
Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voicebecomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.
What is your simple question? (And what questions will you have to give up on? How do you know these voices from your own voice? What does your voice sound like—its tone, pitch, timbre? Where is it coming from in your huge, cavernous body and how is it both like a voice and an ear? How does the voice actually allow you to be an ear to others, to listen with the same dogged care you listen to yourself—the two are related—to know that we really, really need your simple question, so what next, what now?)
Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.
What small step can you take right now? You can abandon your big list. You can trade a better you for a humbler, stiller you, the you who can linger in the conversation longer than comfortable, risk losing some plans, ambitions, to failure (money, approval, your romantic, impenetrable delusions), wave at herself in the mirror without wilting, blow kisses to the ground that never leaves her. You can take one small step that costs you nothing more than your certainty. “Behold, I am doing a new thing,” she whispers.
Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
— David Whyte, “Start Close In”
XO,
Erin
