Everything has its season
Everything has its season is something I say a lot, to me it means acknowledging that there's a time for effort, a time for rest, a time for beginnings and a time to let things end.
Often this newsletter is a place for me to push back against things I see in my day-to-day life. In a lot of ways, the sort of slightly contrarian, whimsical and ineffable ideas that take a home here aren't things I can really discuss so easily with people around me. I don't always feel like arguing and I can't really prove my ideas. So I just let it slide.
But something I do believe is that there is no one way of doing things. There's a see-saw between busy-ness and quiet, between an empty day and a full one - instead of an endlessly repeating routine, mostly a good life is one that encompasses a wide array of experiences and enjoys them, rather than selects only for certain things. I wouldn't always want to be busy, I wouldn't always want to be free. I want both.
When we day dream, or plan, we often imagine the destination - finishing something or arriving, finally, somewhere new. But this tricks us to forgetting that life is really all the days in between and after, all the work that's put in and all the choices we make to get where we're going. We need that destination, but we also need the day-to-day. Over time I've found myself much less interested in the destination and much more interested in my daily life. There are downsides to this, for sure, but I find that while I have lots of big dreams, I'm also really ok just having a lazy day or a quiet week. Focusing on the end point leads to impatience, in me at least, and life is long, longer than I appreciate, there's no benefit in turning oneself inside out to get things done right now. At least in my life.
I'm in a season of getting things done and being busy in the best ways. But even in this time there are days that are really quiet and calm, and it's good to let them be that way. Living the same way, day in and day out, is a bit like a monoculture: the appearance of life but an absence of anything complex and self-sustaining.