A year ago, I couldn't have imagined what a fantastic year 2024 would be in my personal life. It was the year that my energy, stamina, and strength returned, after a long recovery from cancer treatment. It was a year of (mostly) feeling connected to inner joy, despite all the suffering, misery, and darkness in the outer world.
One of my biggest sources of joy has been my Iyengar yoga practice, both the physical asanas (poses) and pranayama (breathwork). A rich golden inner seam of joy opened up during the workshop I did at Yogaview Studio in Nova Scotia in July, and since then, it is easier to tap back into that vein of joy with my regular practice. I'm so grateful to my Iyengar yoga teachers, especially Barbara, Jennifer, Deborah, and Stephanie.
There have been other sources of joy too, including an art project in the winter that helped heal some old emotional wounds. And, I'm almost embarrassed how much delight I take in my new Subarau Outback, both in the driving of it and for all the experiences it has facilitated. In March, I realized that if I wanted to continue to take "Libby," my little teardrop trailer, to the East Coast, I would need to get a new car to replace the old Hyundai Elantra that was straining to pull Libby up the many hills in Nova Scotia. I jumped at the chance to immediately purchase a 2023 demo model of the Outback, instead of up to a six month delay if I ordered something new.
The Outback is a game changer with Libby — it is so much easier to tow the trailer, and to back it up into place at our destination. I'm thrilled. And with all its sturdiness and safety features, the Outback makes driving on the highway much less stressful. Over eight months, I made four trips to the East Coast, twice with Libby, and only once with another driver. Those trips were also made more joyous (and less stressful) after I discovered the "mellow classic rock" station on the Sirius satellite radio station, the 1970s music channel with songs for which I know all the words!! I hadn't heard some of that music for decades! Singing aloud with the radio cranked up definitely made long days of driving solo much more fun.
There was the joy of several reunions with friends and family members. Some of those were celebrations: for example, my Dad's 86th birthday, and the marriage of my nephew Joey to his lovely partner Kate. Some were more chill, like the four November weekends in a row I got to see my parents at home in Cape Breton, the "sleepover party" I had with some friends in early January, and a kayaking trip in the Thousand Islands with an old friend and her delightful new partner (who was her high school sweetheart).
I wrote about some of the other joys in blogs this fall, especially the joy of watching Claire launch successfully at Trent University, and the many adventures Jan and I undertook on his first trip to Canada. There was also the inexplicable joy of the total solar eclipse, watching it unfold on my back deck in the company of my former doctoral supervisor, who drove down from Ottawa. And some incredible live concerts at our beautiful performance auditorium, the Isabel Bader Centre.
And, of course, there are the everyday joys, like seeing our neighbour, Kingston, born in 2022, grow and develop; watching the birds at the feeders in the winter; Dim Sum in Chinatown with a friend after a visit to the AGO; swimming in Lake Ontario; picking strawberries; sharing with a friend the delight of watching numerous monarch butterflies in the beds of flowers at the park; reading Rosemerry Whatola Trommer's daily poetry; savouring good books and films; ... and so much more.
Overall, the year has felt dense, full, and rich. Last January feels like a long time ago! This fits with science reporter Miriam Frankel's observations that having new experiences, and forming and reviewing memories of them, helps us feel that time moves more slowly. As she explains, our experience of time in the moment is different than our perception of it when looking back. Time flies when we are having fun, and feels long when we are bored. But when we look back on the boring and routine periods, the days blur together and time seems to pass more quickly. When a time period has new experiences in it, our memories of it seem to slow down time in retrospect.
(And now I'm thinking of one of my favourite 1970s songs, James Taylor's the Secret O' Life ... is enjoying the passage of time...)
Given all the darkness in the world, it seems more important than ever to embrace joy, wonder, and delight, while also witnessing the suffering and heart-ache. My family was (and still is) heart-broken with the news that my nephew, Robbie, died of a drug overdose on 13 March 2024, on a day when statistically, another 21 families lost a loved one to an overdose. Other miseries are close by and hard to ignore. The housing crisis has pushed hundreds of people in Kington into homelessness, and there are unhoused folks all over the City now. (Of course, the current housing crisis is a perfectly predictable outcome of 40 years of government abandonment of affordable housing.) There are also thousands of households that are food insecure in this City, as many as 1 in 3. At my workplace, the powers-that-be have decided to re-organize the university under the guise of a "budget crisis," laying off the front-line people who actually run the university and destroying the morale and health of those left behind, while continuing to expand the administrative bloat higher up. And then there are the ongoing, more distant horrors of death, disability, and destruction by war (Gaza, Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, Congo, and more). The nightmares of domestic and US politics, and rising authoritarianism around the world. And of course, the intensification of the climate crisis, affecting more and more people.
It's hard to balance all that with wonder, delight, and joy.
In one of my favourite books of the year, States of Emergency, Chris Knapp references Frantz Fanon, a Black liberation, anti-colonial philosopher and psychiatrist:
it is an act of heroism to approach the world with conscience and love.
~~~~~~~~~~
Claire, two family friends, and I closed out 2024 with a stunning, haunting animated film, Flow, that holds beauty and connection-across-difference together with terror, fear, instability, and uncertainty. In the face of environmental catastrophe, a sudden and devastating flood, Cat learns to overcome its fear of other species (Cat's companions include a capybara, a yellow Labrador retreiver, a ring-tailed lemur, and a secretarybird), and its fear of water, to survive. The animation is stunningly beautiful, and the music, composed by the young, Lativian filmmaker, Gints Zilbalodis, effectively conveys diverse emotions. I found myself in awe and wonder with the beauty of the natural landscape portrayed in the film (OH! the abundance of colourful fish that appear in the floodwaters!!!), while also experiencing utter terror with the early scenes of the flood. So much is communicated in the film that I was shocked to realize that there is no dialogue! Unlike Disney animations, these animals stay true to their animal nature and only talk in their own languages. Highly recommended!!!
Despite my inner joy, I am finding it difficult to blithely wish people a "Happy New Year," when things are so challenging, on so many fronts. I like the wish my beloved yoga teacher, Barbara, sent to me:
May our day-to-day be filled with those four "healing qualities" as Guruji [B.K.S. Iyengar] called them - maitrī, karuṇā, muditā, and upekṣa -friendliness/kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity.
So, finally, to close this reflection, with a nod to the joys I haven't mentioned, and all the ones I don't remember, here is Rosemerry Whatola Trommer's 1 January poem. I love the idea she conveys in this poem, that the moments of wonder (and joy) that we have forgotten still nourish and shape us, so that even if we don't remember them, they still matter.
At the Bonfire on New Year's Eve
To the list of things I will likely forget,
add the color of the sky tonight
as we stood around the bonfire,
the way the deep blue gave way
to a deeper blue, to a deeper blue,
until it was blue no more—
every moment more lovely
than the moment before.
How many moments of wonder
have I forgotten in just this past year?
The forgetting makes them no
less wondrous. In fact, as I stood
at the bonfire, I was aware of all
the wonder stored in this body,
how it has shaped me, created me,
as much as any food I’ve eaten,
as much as every walk I’ve taken,
as much as any vitamin. And so
I gathered it in me, the vision of sparks
against the clear night sky, and Venus
perched atop the barren tree. The heat
of the flames and the crackle
of trapped moisture turning to steam.
There will be times this next year
when I desperately need wonder,
and though I will likely forget
the particulars of this night,
let me not forget how to be stirred
by beauty, remade by it, even.
So I practice now, this art
of falling in love with the world.
Come tomorrow, I will practice again.
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