I’m not sure about yours, but in my head, there is always a voice. It speaks to me and through me. Its impact is profound. Often, this voice carries a quiet nagging tone that echoes from within me and leaves me a little high-strung, and requiring more effort than usual to feel settled and grounded. Sometimes, I am lost in that voice; I am bobbing around in it, caught up and consumed by how unloving it can be and how potentially destructive it is to my outlook on life. I write about the voice because I have been careful about it since I took note of its power to influence how I show up in the world, and how this creates and shapes the story of my life every minute and hour that I am steeped in it.
So, as the year draws to an end, I am extra careful with that voice in my head. I watch how it drives me to spend and how I am desperately needing to acquire stuff and escape my reality. I am looking at the direction in which it is pulling me and what it has me focused on. This time around, I am engaged in a wrestling match with the voice in my head. I am going against it. I am vehemently protesting against what can be a damaging narrative that takes a jab at my self-worth.
First of all, the body that the voice speaks into is tired. To be precise, the body is exhausted, drained and pulled apart by this supercharged year we have sped through at an incredible pace, making up for the COVID-impacted years that came before it. My body was depleted even before we started 2022. This body of mine has witnessed devastation and breakdowns of the highest order. 2020 and 2021 were a culmination of massive combined disruptions in personal, family, community and global spheres. Nowhere did I look and not sympathise with what others were experiencing, even as I was holding my own pain and strife.
So, even this alone is making me guard what this voice in my head is telling me. Like a hawk, I am watching what subliminal messages it is sending. Low and behold, even when I am fast asleep in pursuit of peaceful rest, it awakens me because it has crept in to signal something in my dreams.
This is the voice that will help to shape how I end the year and the way I begin the coming new year. I am mindful of how much the society I live in keeps me trapped in the need or desire to perform, get things done, achieve, amass and acquire. We live in a ‘doing’ culture where we always find our comfort and consolation in what we have accomplished. Our focus is rooted in the giant leaps and significant strides we take, and if those aren't coming as readily as we would like, we focus on the small and steady steps that signify progress. We hardly ever speak to the need for rest or restoration. We negate how, when we are still and silent, we are building our capacity and room within us to replenish what the world has stripped us of during the most disruptive years we have encountered. I want to normalise not achieving, so that we don't have to endure so much to achieve.
At the same time, I think I am tired of the narrative that says we need to struggle and encounter challenge to succeed. I don't want to struggle and I don't want to witness more strife in and around me. I want to celebrate being quiet, being with myself, not doing. I want to prioritise being still, nurturing myself and most importantly, being kind. I mustn't be required to do anything before I get recognition. Why can't I be praised for being present as I am and availing myself when the year comes to an end?
Yes, there is firepower in being determined, and yes, harsh circumstances of hate, hardship and pain fuel determination. I see the link between our steadfast beliefs and how powerful they are in inviting us into a relentless fight for what we believe. I see the great things that are achieved when we step into our power and fight with fervour for a cause we believe is aligned with our purpose. However, I want a gentler and more eased-out expression of belief and meaning, where a purposeful journey is paved with loving kindness and support and where struggle and strife are mere pebbles on a path and not the boulders I seem to be encountering in mine.
Can I be allowed to sit still this season? Can I not be counted on to provide a lavish spread on Christmas day? I want to be embraced and accepted for being me, and be more loving toward and kinder to myself.
Please can this year’s end and the start of the new year be cushioned by gentleness and a desire for calm and restorative strides into my life? Can I always enquire into my state of being, and ask how those that I love and am surrounded by are doing? Can I allow myself to register – within myself – how I am feeling and what I need before I start my day? Can that be the motto that drives the conversations I engage in to ascertain how well we are resourced to face another day?
I am excited, not because I am victorious – the battle in my head is still ongoing – but because I am more clearly seeing what I need to attend to and how I will redirect the voice in my head to focus on what it needs to say to energise me rather than deplete me further. I want the rest and calm that my body needs to return to a state of being that will steady me and support me as I navigate the next chapter of my life in the year 2023.
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