My Trust Year

My first day of the year is a planned empty day, and a joyful thing. I know this last year has been a significant one for me, but I’m not yet able to say how. This is a quiet morning.  The only sounds are children playing and screaming in the courtyard outside my window, demanding in child language that parents and playmates see them and hear them. That doesn't change with age, we just change the way we do it.

For some reason this first morning, I am called to flip through pictures on my phone and review the past year. The pictures are organized by date. Thankfully this refreshes my short-term memory, which is continually wiped clean as new urgent tasks and tedious obligations enter in and push out the events of 30 and 100 days ago. I forgot the brilliant leaps of the last 365 days. I am grateful that our daily worries and to-do lists and the weight we grant them are not saved and organized by date. I would be a little embarrassed to review that.

Here’s what I found.

The year started with moving on from a misfit job. I knew it when I took it. I celebrated the leaving by going on a three day, 1,100 mile road trip from San Diego to the furthest tip of the Baja Peninsula to help a remarkable friend rediscover the strength and fearlessness that we could all see. She just needed to remember it.

And then this adventure became the catalyst for my big year. Thanks for the lessons in fearlessness my friend.

I also celebrated by signing up for a month of immersive Spanish classes in Mexico City. I completely and unexpectedly fell in love with a place, which has only happened a couple of times in my life. I decided to act on it, which has never happened to my life.

Along with some of the people I love the most, we created a space in the California hills to play over one small weekend. They danced me across one of the greatest birthday thresholds of my life. I get to be an Elder now in the company of brilliant Elders.

I packed up my home and shoved belongings into storage, and gave even more away to try to clear all of me out my home so that I could turn it over to a new friend. When I moved out and arrived in my new country, I went through the deepest isolation and loneliness I’ve ever felt in my life. And I didn't tell anyone.

I looked at 48 apartments in a city I barely knew while bouncing back and forth between two worlds for three months. I made one of the largest investments I’ve ever made, in a foreign and not always welcoming country. I blindly trusted a friend I met only a few weeks before to navigate the bewildering transaction on my behalf. I designed a new home completely in my head, then tried to communicate that vision to carpenters and craftspeople through Google Translate, photos on my phone, and drawings on walls.

I ended 10 years as a board member and officer of an organization that teaches gratefulness, and I am grateful for all it taught me. The new leaders will take it now, and I will let my work, my dreams, and my time with it fall away.

The year ended with a glorious, adventurous, heart opening visit from a Beloved friend - a few days of joy, support, and ease. We flew above the city, we walked through the dark underbelly of my new home, we ate incredible food, we slept, we wore pajamas all day, and we closed it all down.

This morning, I am in Mexico City in my 15th Airbnb in the last 9 months. I am wearing the same handful of pants and T-shirts and two pairs of shoes that I have packed into and pulled out of the same suitcase since March. If you know me, you know that like my home to be a sanctuary - a grounded, solid place of respite, beauty, recharging and quiet. I need my nest in order to venture out. This constant moving, and eating every meal out, and taking my chances with mattresses and water pressure and hot water every couple of weeks has been hard for me.

And, I chose every bit of this. More than at any other time in my life, I am trusting my instincts. My direction and reasons are quiet and unclear. I am acting based on desire and my gut. This is new for me, and it scares me. So I will continue.

I can describe a few lessons from the year on this quiet morning. More will come to me over time.

1. Keep the little tedious daily stuff as the little stuff. Keep it in perspective. Just get it done. It doesn't deserve emotion or weight. Don't let it crowd out the big important things that make life rich and joyful.

2. I am at an age where connection and loved ones are more important than anything else in my life. This is new for me. This will get my energy now.

3. When I need help, ask for it. Tell someone. This last one is a lesson that I have needed over and over again. Maybe this time I’ve learned it.

I recently came together with some brilliant seekers and Elders in a candle lit room, speaking our fears and damage and wishes, laying down and listening to the voices of our great teachers whispering in our ears. It was a big night for me. I did some important re-membering. I was told that the only fear and doubt in my life are the fear and doubt that I bring into it. 

I feel like I should make some promises on this empty first day. Sometimes it's harder for me to stick to the commitments to myself than commitments I make to others. I hold my commitments to others as sacred.

In 2024 I will call my friends often and tell them I love them before ending the call. I will look for others with an open heart and a desire to know me and I will offer to bring them close, and be brave enough to do so if they are also willing.

I will honor the commitments to myself as sacred.

I will catch my own doubting as soon as I hear it and I will set it aside. 

I will recognize my own fear and leave it at the door. And if I can't do that, I will slip the fear into a back pocket, or perhaps my sock or some other unimportant place, and I will carry it along with me like an annoying travel partner, and I will act anyway.

I will follow my faint instincts and desires. I will listen to the great teacher in me as it whispers in my ear . . . 

"Trust."