At the Center

I come from a collective culture. A sense of community is central to who we are. We congregate for celebrations, to mourn, to organize. My family unit, though not terribly prone to sharing all of our feelings, watches out for its members. We take care of each other. We put the feelings of others first before our own.

I have been thinking a lot lately about this notion of collective consciousness. It brings with it great gifts: a sense of unmatched empathy, an urge to help those who suffer and an ability to organize ourselves around a cause.

I have also realized how difficult it can be to take yourself apart from this collective and to put your own feelings at the center of an experience.

In collective cultures, we are raised with the understanding that being overly concerned about how you feel is selfish in a way - self-centred at worst. We are often allowed to feel and mourn for a limited amount of time before we need to go back into the fold of our collective and to help those who are possibly suffering more than we are, or somehow need us to step up for them.

But when we limit our ability to process our own feelings and thoughts, we truncate our experiences in a way that is not beneficial to anyone in the long run. Not being able to put yourself at the center takes away parts of who you are, your ability to form ideas and judgments and your ability to provide skills to a greater cause.

It sounds wrong to me, and it always has to be self-centred. But redefining it in terms of self-consideration is much more helpful. When we are caught up in in something - be it some greater societal cause, a relationship, work - we don't take time to consider ourselves. To be self-centred, means being at the centre of your own experiences, to have the permission and capacity to own your own person.  If you are tired and washed out, you have nothing to give. You cannot pour from an empty cup.

One of the greatest things that I have learned to do is replenish so that I don't negotiate parts of myself away. Those pieces of ourselves go slowly over time, without us noticing. Until at the end, we are left tired and depleted.  We are, at the very end, not responsible for how others process and handle their own feelings. We are only responsible for how we react, process, and reflect back

Our ability to understand the plight and joy of others is perhaps one of the best things about us as a culture.  In a time where we surely need it more, it bodes well to consider ourselves in equal measure as we consider others, to not criticize those who cope in different ways than us, and to understand that everyone is out to survive the only and best way they know how. 

I continue to consider myself. I also take the opportunity to question myself and to be accountable to a better version of myself. I think if we all start considering ourselves, we will add to our collective humanity, the best parts of ourselves. And in the end, that's a collective everyone wants to be a part of. 

Helpful Conversations

The other day, a very good friend of mine and I were chatting and she decided to bring up a topic of conversation that is strictly a hands off topic for me. It concerned a relationship with someone in my past who no longer shares my present. Now, I am not one to deny past events, but I find it more useful to not dredge up things that don't serve me now or later. 

I have had a discussion with this friend about this particular situation and to please not bring it up. I was a little blind-sided by it. I'm not sure what her intentions were: whether she was trying to find out what this person was up to, or get more information, or whether she was simply forgetful. It's hard to say, but it didn't sit well. And to tell you the truth, I've been grumpy about it ever since (admittedly my stubbornness is a strength but also a weakness).

I've been thinking a lot lately about the helpfulness of the conversations we have with each other. Most of us are open and willing to let our boundaries be semi-permeable. Our flexibility is what makes people good friends, good spouses and good parents. The same arms that are open for a hug to a crying friend, can be used to shield someone from pain. The same words that can bring comfort, can be barbed if the intention is different.

In a time where conversations are critical to building bridges, we are reaching out to more people than we would normally reach out to. Social media has been a big part of this. Between our disbelief, the use of humour, and if-then situations, we've all been talking to each other. It is now more important than ever to have conversations that help us move forward. We can share in each other's grief, and panic, and humour, and joy, but all of it is for naught if we don't stay sensitive to people's boundaries and communication skills. Here are a few things I've learned in sharing conversations with others over the last few months.

1. Ask yourself whether you're honouring someone's sensitivities: If you rolled your eyes at this, don't worry, I'm rolling mine too. I sound like I should be wearing a crown of flowers. But the point here is important If something is particularly painful for a person, respect that they might be sensitive talking about it and try not to push the issue. They may need the time to process it, or they may never want to speak about it. It's not your call to make.

2. Ask yourself if you're being helpful: Sometimes being helpful means shutting your mouth. If you are talking just to add a voice, ask yourself whether this is what the conversation needs. Is it worth your time to argue with an egg?

3. Keep the prophesying to a minimum: Conspiracy theories are fantastic fun if you're watching the X-Files. But as far as you and I are concerned, none of us know anything about what tomorrow will hold, and whether the most recent article on CNN will be right or wrong. Prophesying leads to fearmongering, and unfortunately, that spreads like wildfire.

4. Listen: You don't need to talk all the time. Someone needs to listen too. 

5. Accept that you don't know everything: It's easy to google things and sound smart. Lord knows we've all done it. The Coles notes version is not always the most accurate because it misses the nuances. Accept that you might just know a small part of the story and either learn more, or talk on terms that are aligned with what you know.

Last Monday, I fired up my email at work early in the morning. I had an email from a senior colleague titled "Reaching Out". He wanted to see how I was doing after a rather tough weekend for the world. He mentioned that he was there to support how he could, and would like to have a chat about how he could be useful.

I have worked with this colleague an awful lot, but we have mostly kept it professional and our tea room chats are generally about what I'm reading lately. I tend to keep my personal and professional life strictly separate. This was, however, one of the most thoughtful emails I have received. It offered help, it added action, and it respected my boundaries.

It is lovely to be part of a group of people who help each other along. Action is important, but usually starts with words. Words hold incredible power to help others rather than merely take up space. We move forward when we employ them with the intent to help each other move forward.

On Truth and Listening

I am deeply, comfortably introverted. I accept (more or less) this part of my nature in all its book-loving, quiet-seeking, ardently-creative glory. For as long as I can remember, I have always asked questions so that I could listen to the answers. I didn't divulge much and I still don't tell everyone everything that is going on with me. That is a privilege that is earned. I am, however, very good at listening. 

Listening awards us so many gifts. For one, it allows us to plug directly into ideas that are not our own. It gives us perspectives that we might not have considered. It enables us to get a whole slew of ideas to form interesting patterns from. It gives us the benefit of creating "character profiles" of the people we are listening to, so that they are more colourful, more poignant and more human than any one interaction. As friends, colleagues, family, listening is to our greatest benefit. It is not only sensory (we have ears!), but supersenory - letting us form ideas that go beyond the medium of reception.

But what happens when we are confronted with ideas that we can't easily sift through to categorize and apply? What if, for some reason, we're faced with information that, at first blush, doesn't seem accurate? Perhaps it is even purposefully misleading? What if it straddles that very fine line between truth and fiction?

People who meditate often talk about the idea of detachment, whereby  a person engages with something without judgement, without wanting to pigeon-hole it into a particular ideology. Letting the idea come and go without conscious attachment. I like this idea but it doesn't always make sense in a world where we are forced to make decisions about how we feel, and how we should act. To detach from the ideas that come at us, is in some ways, a disservice to action when it is required.

How do we then, reconcile ourselves to common truths without owning every idea that comes at us? The answer to me, has always been to listen deeply. Listen to context. Listen not only to words, but how those words are applied - what are they in the service of? Have they been weaponized? Do they offer anything, and if so, what do they offer? What is the path they have taken to get to us?

As a reader, I've made it a sort of passion to play with, and learn from the works of others. I can't take it all on board because my brain would be filled to the brim. But after a long time reading someone's work, you start to see and hear the patterns that govern their lives, the part of themselves that they readily exploit, and the parts that they artfully dance right around. 

One of my favourite quotes - it is written on the inside of my work notebook - is by the glorious and effusive Anne Michaels from her first work of fiction Fugitive Pieces: Truth grows gradually in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time." 

Truth is sometimes like that. It's not always obvious, even though it's obviously there. We are absolutely mired, some days, in inflammatory rhetoric, cat photos, and for whatever reason, celebrity bottoms. But beyond the cats and bottoms, if you take one moment of sit down and digest what you know, perhaps file away the things that don't serve purpose, perhaps not shout at others who are also under the weight of their own ambiguous truthy burdens, there is a place where listening pays off.

I often work in silence. I sit on my couch, facing a large window, and the only thing I can hear is the whoosh of traffic outside, and the buzz of the refrigerator. These are the moments I take for myself to listen to myself, and to take what others are saying into account.

Not everything the world offers us is truth. Truth is found in patterns - not patterns that are coerced to fit an idea. These are naturally occurring patterns - they emerge, over time, by themselves, until they're too obvious to ignore.

But they only become obvious, if you sit. And you listen.

Some useful things to read:

Julian Treasure on 5 Ways to Listen Better

How to Be a Good Listener

Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Art of Living

On Preservation

Over the last week, I have been on a forced rest, taken down swiftly by a nasty flu virus. (If you are thinking of yelling at me about the flu shot, you can get off your soapbox because my sister has already done the honours). In a haze of lozenges, fitful naps, and bowls of soup, I have been watching a lot of informative television.

I'm not sure what the show was that I was watching yesterday (I think it might have been something about Nordic cookery), but I learned about the Global Seed Vault. If you don't know about the Global Seed Vault, it is a repository of crop seeds from almost every country in the world, stored in Svalbard. The permafrost conditions and storage facility ensure that the seeds will be kept safe in the case of manmade or natural disaster. It has the capacity to hold some 4.5 Million seed samples and currently holds about 860,000. 

In my flu-ridden, drug-infused haze, relief washed over me. I'm really glad someone is preparing for disaster.  

Human beings have always had a great capacity to both destroy and preserve, when the desire strikes. Though we don't always see destruction in a positive light, it is part of the cycle of creation. Things need to be destroyed or overtaken in order for other things to be possible.

The beauty of it all is that of course, we have the capacity to come away with knowledge so often, that can in turn inform our new creations. We are naturally prone to preserve, everything from human beings (let's ask the archaeologists) to books (thank you, librarians throughout history).

Beyond the obvious that preservation is linked to the memory of who we are and how far we've come along, there is another purpose to it and that is to hedge our bets in the face of uncertainty.

When we don't know what's coming down the pipeline, we are likely to maintain some semblance of sameness in order to keep the integrity of the things that we know best. It is in some way, a false, but noble guarantee that we are trying to give ourselves.

We sometimes try to preserve out of fear because of uncertainty. That act in itself works against us because it closes us off to how the future unknowns can actually impact, enhance or change us.

We need to be agile enough to be able to move outside of the confines of our current situation. I have always grappled with this idea. It applies to us professionally and personally. How do we move without losing our sense of purpose?

We endeavour to keep the essence of, or the most critical parts of things that represent, in the smallest piece, who we are. The world is not a vacuum and it is certainly foolhardy to think that we can keep everything and adapt to changing conditions. Things are never going to be "the way they were" because they change instantaneously and often. Instead, we keep those most crucial things that when placed into new environments, will be in their very core, similar to what we know about our past. It is about having the essence right to be able to undertake adaptation when everything around us changes.

The Global Seed Vault is exactly that idea. We know that the climate is changing. We don't know what soil conditions will be like, how much rainfall or arable land there will be, whether the chemical composition of soil will change. But we have (literally), the seed of potential.

That's enough to give anyone hope.

More reading on preservation

Mali's Librarians Saving Ancient Manuscripts from Rebel Forces

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The Effect of Music on Dementia Patients

The Year of Ease

Every year, I pick a word that I want to make a conscious part of my daily life. I'm not a believer in resolutions; if you have the desire to do something, you'll find a way to do it. The start of the year has never been enough of a motivation for me to start a new habit. That being said, I do believe the the conscious remembrance of something regularly, eventually makes it part of your life.

In the past, my words have really reflected where I am mentally and emotionally. When I first moved out on my own, I picked the word "Joy" because I needed to find that in a world that was going to bring me new challenges. Other words have included "fire" and "wonder."

This year, I'm choosing the word "Ease."

We all know what the word means in daily life. When I looked up the meaning, the definition included:

make (something unpleasant, painful, or intense) less serious or severe.

move carefully, gradually, or gently.

As someone who has lived off of stringent schedules and a regimented lifestyle, it is difficult to imagine living with a sense of ease - it makes me uneasy. I suspect that you would have to pry my schedules and calendars out of my cold, dead hands. And I'd probably come back from the dead to snatch it off of you again.

But life dictates something different this year. Mostly, having to fight your way through your days leaves you depleted and fatigued. A few days off from work have shown me just how tired I am and I have spent far more time than necessary just sitting there, and doing nothing. It has driven me to the brink of insanity because I feel like I should be doing something, anything.

What I have realized in the large swaths of time that I have spent denting my couch is that in order to actually employ any ease, we need to be forgiving of ourselves, and show compassion to ourselves. If you are anything like me, you're good with the sharp, pointy words aimed at yourself. Phrases like, "you should have known better" and "If you don't go to the gym, you're just being lazy" and "you ought to be more careful" can quickly become a cycle of self-blame.

What good comes of it? I have never given myself a good scold and then felt really jazzed to do whatever I was meant to do. Fear is a good motivator, but certainly isn't the best and more importantly, isn't healthy if employed slavishly. If anything, we make it more difficult for ourselves when we pigeon-hole ourselves into our obligations.

A sense of ease means giving yourself permission to forgive yourself, and to show some compassion to yourself when things don't go the way they are meant to. It means just letting go a little bit and asking yourself whether the end result is worth the flogging. It issn't the same as pushing yourself or scaling up your dreams. It's beating yourself into submission, and oftentimes to unrealistic expectations you wouldn't hold others to.

After 2016, which, terrible as it was around the world, wasn't a personally horrible year. There were some extremely difficult decisions I had to make, but I came away with a better aligned sense of self from it. This isn't a terrible thing. That means that this year is a year in which I can ease into my days, and grant myself the go-ahead of take the foot off the gas pedal just a little bit.

I deem it will be a year of growth and of focus on myself and the ever-elusive "next steps", whatever those are. No climbing mountains. No leaps of faith. No going the distance. Just a gentle, care-filled year.

Do you have a word of the year that you can share?

On Emotional Immunity

"I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders." ~ Hebrew Proverb

I have never liked driving. I didn't get my full licence until I was in my early twenties. This is because every time I got on the road I was absolutely terrified. I was terrified mostly of operating something so much larger than than I was, of not being able to anticipate the actions of others, and of going anywhere too fast. 

When I got my licence, I thought, okay that's over with, and now I never have drive again. This seems now like the exactly the opposite direction that my thoughts should have been going. My mother advised me (much to my annoyance) that the only way I was going to get over my fear of being on the road is if I got on the road. I'd have to go on the freeway for small stretches at least and I'd have to practice until my reflexes and my understanding of the road got better. I hated every moment of it, but in the end, it did get better. If for nothing else, than for necessity.

I still have days when, if I have to go to a new place, and I'm alone, and it's dark and raining, or I have to find street parking (which is an absolute battle in a city like mine), I'll be nervous. Sometimes that nervousness is debilitating and makes me feel nauseated. Most times, there is no way around it.

Therapists have long encouraged a particular type of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy known as Exposure Therapy. In exposure therapy a patient is exposed to their stressor without the context of danger in order to overcome their anxiety. It is used quite a lot in specific phobias and even in post traumatic stress disorder. The thinking is that once the threat of the stressor is removed, the patient is able to exert some control over their anxiety and through a series of increasing steps, eventually the fear will dissipate. It has had some very cool applications as well.

I have been thinking a lot about this idea of the constant exposure to stimuli that we would rather avoid in real life. Social media and how close the world is now, has made it increasingly difficult to get away.  It's a rather romantic notion to be able to start anew somewhere away from all the things that bother us. That's not possible, nor is it, in some respects, wise.

I like to think that being exposed to the things and people we'd rather not deal with is a way of building up emotional immunity. It helps us home in our coping mechanisms so that over time, feeling disembodied, out of control and anxious starts to fade. We start to be able to handle it a little bit better. Running away is often easy and safe. Being present and staying with that discomfort is often difficult and undesirable.

In his book "Antifragile", Nassim Nicolas Taleb coins this concept of anti-fragility. Things that are fragile, often break when exposed to stressors. Things that are resilient often stay the same. Things that are anti-fragile gain from chaos - they get better. While not all things can be classified as chaotic, they certain can feel like it when your internal sense of control is shaken. Exposure then, tests the emotional boundaries that we have and can help us modulate our reactions, helping us to "get better" over time. It appears to be a way of building up your body's immune response on a psychological level.

Last week was a rather difficult week at work. My mother called in me while I was in the midst of a nervous breakdown (not really, but tears weren't far) to ask my how my day was going. I told her that it had been difficult and that I was doing things that were actually legitimately beyond my capability. Being ever the teacher of tough lessons, she said to me, "You know life is difficult. So just deal with it and get it done."

Often, the best ways to face our greatest anxieties (or the small, continuous anxieties that plague our daily lives) is to indeed just deal with them. Head on. In her small, and often tough love way, my mother has taught me this. This lesson has been critical for me to learn to handle my own anxiety around certain things and certain people. Over time, it simply becomes easier to go from "not this again" to "fine. it's happening and I'll deal with it because I know how." Truly, it's just a little better to give yourself some credit in that way.

A few good reads on this topic:

Thin Slices of Anxiety on Brain Pickings

A Servant to Servants by Robert Frost

Knowledge Makes Everything Simpler on Farnam Street

Affective Outcomes on Virtual Reality Exposure for Anxiety and Specific Phobias: A Meta Analysis (Parsons and Rizzo) in the Journal of Behavour

On Clean Slates

I recently upgraded my phone. It was only two or three years old, but I needed a new plan and so I thought I might as well get a new phone. I had the same sim card for a good many years and I had done the good work on saving all of my contacts on it. I seldom back anything up on my phone and I don't keep a lot of things on there - as you probably know by now, I'm not a keeper of things in general, technology included. If it's enough to alert people to my existence, it's just enough for me.

With the new phone, however, I couldn't use my old sim card. It was a newer, bigger card and so the old one had to be discarded - along with all of my contacts from the last, oh, ten years?

Most people that I know, at this point, would panic. Or, if they were smarter than I am, would have saved their contacts to various other places so as not to lose any information and avert any crisis.

I didn't panic. I was glad for it.

Over the decade or so, I had accumulated an awful lot of contacts in my phone, many of which I simply hadn't used. Mind you, they are all nice people, but they simply aren't part of my day to day.  I had periodically erased contacts of people I definitely didn't speak to anymore, or random ones accumulated through networking and such, but I hadn't done a thorough clean up.

I treated this as an opportunity to start afresh. Everyone was gone, more of less, and I don't have much of a memory for phone numbers anymore. I proceeded to put out a call to friends to please send me their numbers. Many did. Many didn't. And the decision was made for me.

There are two kinds of people I have encountered: the ones that keep absolutely everything and everyone and the ones that keep nothing or very little. Neither one of these is right or wrong. I know that new beginnings are terrifying. We are stepping into an unknown mostly full of now-whats. It's overwhelming to think about what you can do with all of that time and space.  But the possibilities to remake or build new are endless. You have the chance to rid yourself of constricting ideas that are tightly wound around who you are and what you have.

So much of what we surround ourselves with is remnants of who we were, whether we crave the nostalgia of those things, or whether we still believe ourselves to be those people.  We don't often realize that those things are stale, in the same way that an old souvenir bottle of hot sauce in the fridge is kitschy, but offensive at the same time.

We can all benefit from an absolute throw-out of everything. I love clean slates and I start so many new beginnings that it's almost a habit at this point. There are certainly things that we can't wipe out, no matter how much we try - but then again, those things make us who we are. 

For me the autumn seems like a good time to both wind down and start anew. No longer in school, I still feel that the year is the most ripe with possibilities at this time, and I do silly things like buy new pens and throw out my summer shoes. 

Once we admit it to ourselves, a thorough razing of some aspect of life is a good thing, if for nothing else than to get past the things that take up too much space and are difficult to negotiate with because they end up consuming us with their presence. Though I am a follower of a gentler way of cleaning up, an overhaul can do wonders. This is not an easy task and you often find yourself at odds with yourself. But it's worth asking, why is this still around?

A few of my favourite reads/listens:

The Personality Myth on Invisibilia

On Final Things on The Book of Life

The Four Tools of Discipline on Farnam Street Blog

The Patience of Getting on with Things

I'm stuck on a packed train in the morning. I can smell the morning-ness on other people. The smell of freshly showered with the mingling of coffee breath. It's raining outside (as usual), so we can't crack the windows open without having the rain pelt our heads from a usually fast moving train.

The irritation and impatience is palpable. Eyes are rolling. Deep exasperated coffee-laced sighs appear to be fogging up the already foggy windows. Nobody is pleased.

The woman who is sitting on directly next to me looks like she's about to leap out the window from frustration. "I can't believe this is happening again!" she says a little bit louder than necessary. "This is very irritating." Her irritability is coming off of her in great big plumes and penetrating the strained quiet that we are bent on maintaining. I can't stay quiet much longer.

"Well, what are you going to do?" I say.

"I can't do anything about it! I'm not happy about this!" she replies. She's getting visibly more purple.

"That's exactly it. You can't control this situation, so you have to wait it out. Like the rest of us. We're all going to be late to work or school and we can't do anything about it. So there's no need to get mad about it." I respond.

I've said my piece now.

The thing is, minor and major inconveniences are part and parcel of our daily lives these days. From email that loads far too slow, to missed buses, to missed deadlines. And my favourite: people not doing what I asked them when I asked them.

Any combination of these can lead us into emotional states that range anywhere from minor irritation to out and out rage.

Lately, I've been sensing the constant current of irritation that comes from encountering minor inconveniences daily. I've had to pull away from others because of foul moods. And I've taken to supplementing my diet with far too much comfort food as a result.

But because I believe that everything comes with consequences and trade-offs, my very human, albeit miserable behaviour has been to nobody's benefit, least of all, mine. In a bid to "fix" something that I know I can fix, I've had to remind myself that patience is the well from which creation, curiosity, and contentment spring. I've had to remind myself of these things:

Nothing happens without patience: We fail in life. All the time. And if we're lucky, we fail a lot. Patience is linked with knowing that the good things take time to happen. Of course, there are things like perseverance, grit, courage, all linked with the good things. But without patience, we're apt to throw our hands up.

Patience requires gratitude: Being trapped on a crowded train is to nobody's taste. It helped to remind myself that I had a job to go to, that I didn't have to walk to, and an understanding team that was familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the public transit system

Patience comes with acknowledging the fine line between what you can and can't control: We can't control everything that happens to us. We often can control whether we choose to see things one way or another. This isn't a bid for positivity (I wouldn't preach that!). It is however, worth understanding that our reactions may need to be in proportion with the situation.

Patience requires regular practice: Lord help me sometimes it's just easier to imagine smacking someone upside the head from the absolutely asinine thing that they just uttered. We all have those moments. Reminders to cultivate patience are crucial in those moments where resolve is being tested and nerves are being frayed. These are teachable moments.

We have very human tendencies to get quite grumpy when things don't go our way. It's the seedy underbelly of being a creature with forethought and introspection. But what is our weakness is also our strength. We are given the incredible power to understand our own actions and the fact that we are complicit in the outcomes that they produce. I'm making a promise with myself to have more patience in my life. Time is short; I'd rather spend it in a state of awareness rather than in a fog of my own undoing.

PS: If you want to read some good things about patience, here are some of my favourites:

Kafka on Love and Patience (Brainpickings)

Four Steps to Developing Patience (Psychology Today)

On Irritability (The Book of Life)

On Leaving Things Behind

When I was young, my family moved a lot. By the time I was 10, we had moved more than a dozen times. These journeys weren't all terribly well-planned. Sometimes we'd have a very short time to get our things together and go. I learned very quickly not to get attached to things that I wouldn't be able to take with me if the time came (and it almost inevitably did). I have one distinct memory of moving from my maternal grandmother's home. I tried as best as I could to stuff all 50 of my very thin fairy tale books into a suitcase, working my way around the nooks and crannies, wrapping clothes around them. I remember thinking that I probably wouldn't be able to do that next time around.

My frugality with things has continued throughout my life. I have always been reluctant to buy things that I didn't absolutely require. I still don't have a dining table or a blender. My bibliophilia has continued on unabated, such that when I moved into my current home, my books made up half of the boxes that were moved into the house. Though my home is filled with the things that I love, and it feels very much like a home, I always think twice about adding to the lot.

When we travel, we often make lists of things that we ought to be taking with us, to prepare for different scenarios on the trip. My own sister usually puts together entire outfits in case we have a nice dinner, or a beach day, or a trip to a museum. Lists can be extensive from various hair implements to the appropriate footwear (carry the one).

For most of my adult life, I have tried to travel as lightly as I can. It helps that most of my clothes are fashionably neutral and I don't wear much in the way of makeup, so the complexity is somewhat reduced. Still, I find myself asking the question, what can I leave behind? rather than what can I take with me?

There is a good lesson in how we conduct our lives here. In the days where minimalism happens to be in vogue, and everyone is engaged in the life-changing magic of tidying, it does us good to have an inventory of the habits, the people, the thoughts that we can leave behind. After all, just like the acid-wash jeans that served us when we were younger, some things just no longer do; after a while, they might even start to look a bit ridiculous.

We are deeply attached "what ifs" and "just in cases", all to prepare us for some inevitable future of our own mind's making.

I've found that there is an art to leaving things behind, that only comes over time, and out of habit. Though difficult to oblige, we realize that the unnecessary and seldom useful take up valuable space in our psyches. Like old clothes, or an extra pair of shoes, they hang around, claiming a territory that might well hold something more useful. Once we recognize that these eventualities may not exist, and that we are perfectly capable of making do if necessary, that space then becomes occupied by something more luxurious and more potent: potential.