Some Notes to Close the Year

I hope you have had time to fill your cup in the past few days, whether it was with loved ones or alone, resting, reading, walking in the woods, swimming in the ocean. I have enjoyed hibernating, as it’s been extraordinarily cold and blissfully quiet.

This year, we gave and received more books than usual, having learned about the Icelandic tradition Jólabókaflóðið, which occurs on Christmas Eve. Everyone reads books they’ve been given that evening, while drinking hot chocolate. (Yes, it’s also a major retailing opportunity, but still…books and hot chocolate!).

Photo by Meyra

Among the books I’ve read are Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World and Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi’s When No Thing Works.

As we move into the new year, I thought I’d share two quotes that especially resonated with me.

In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles of reciprocity. A gift economy nurtures the community bonds that enhance mutual well-being; the economic unit is “we” rather than “I,” as all flourishing is mutual. –Robin Wall Kimmerer

The emergent worldview is built on the strongest and most flexible of intertangled relationships in which we daily practice interdependence, a way in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence and thriving. This is a distant and impossible ideal unless we have a practice of cultivating relationships. – Norma Wong

I hope these words offer a framework for how we can move in the world this year and beyond.

If you’re feeling reflective, try journaling about these two questions – what do you want to leave behind in 2024 and what do you want to carry forward.

And if you’re up for a hands-on activity, try vision boarding today or later this week. See my 2023 board below! Now I create the vision on my Muji planner, so I can carry it around with me. Manifest the 2025 you want!

My vision board for 2023

We don’t know a lot about what next year it will bring, but we know it will be hard on too many people. And we will need each other, for fortification, inspiration and joy. Thank you for being in community with me.

Sayu