I’ve written about Opening before as an essential part of navigating conflict.
I’m looking for a bit of focus in my life on my blog.
So, in the shadow of Julie and Julia, etcetereteretera, I’m entering a year.
A year of Opening.
It’s not a year of calm
Last night I wrote this:
***
My Year of Calm
Towards:
- gentle
- warm
- opening
- conscious
Away from:
- grumpy
- snarly
- suppressing
- closing
- pretending
Especially in times of:
- crisis and
- conflict
Then I put two little arrows around the last two:
- conflict and
- crisis
It scans better.
But…
Calm does not hold inside it the values I’m looking for.
Calm quite easily involves suppressing, and fakeness. For me, it needs to be ok to feel angry, scared, embarrassed.
So I realised it needed to be my year of Opening.
Opening towards what I’m feeling, towards what’s happening around me.
Treating the present moment as if I’d invited it in, to paraphrase Pema Chödrön.
And besides, it reduces to YoO. YoO!
Hyuh.
So, er, what now?
Something I’m glad about is that this won’t entail me changing anything about the details of my life, or even what happens here (on-the-blog here).
I’d like to carry on researching the mechanisms of crisis and conflict (sorry, conflict and crisis), emotion, the mind…
But I just have a hunch that Opening is a key.
So… I’ll be opening, I’ll be writing, you’ll be reading, maybe you’ll be commenting when the urge moves you…
It’s good.
And there’ll be a significant test towards the end: Christmas.
And who knows – if I can find out something useful that I can teach, I’d love that.
So (*whinnies lips*) – Day One.
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