I don’t usually set a new year’s resolution. In the early dawn days of a new year, I do revel in the promise and potential of the year to come, with its wonderous unknowns and absence of baggage, but I always feel as though setting a resolution sets expectations too high. While I haven’t bothered to confirm this with Webster or Collins or the Oxford English Dictionary, I can only assume that the word resolution is etymologically linked to terms like be it resolved that and to be resolute in, both of which bring to mind a sense of hard-nosed finality I find both unsavory and unrealistic. The word resolution carries such weight and gravitas, such a sense of ceremonious commitment, that the term itself seems to reek of the portent of failure, and the inevitable guilt and shame that comes with it.
In lieu of setting a resolution, I’ve decided that this year I’m going to follow Gretchen Rubin’s lead. Rubin, author of the bestselling book The Happiness Project, sets a one-word theme for the year to come. She argues that setting a theme is a simple way to narrow your intentions. The word you choose for your theme then becomes an easy-to-remember personal mantra as you mull over what you’d like to focus on in the year to come (Rubin has a number of practical tips on how to make resolutions more meaningful here on her blog).
With this in mind, I’ve decided that my word for this year will be float, which is a bit ironic considering that some of my earliest experiences with failure can be summed up in the following image:
During the 80s and 90s, the Canadian Red Cross used a badge level system to assess water safety for kids. Never a strong swimmer, I repeatedly failed to get my red badge, and I’m convinced that this early humiliation embossed itself on my psyche. To this day, I measure my mental and emotional health in water safety similes and metaphors. In recent years, as my familial and work responsibilities increased in tandem, I often felt like I was drowning, under water, adrift. On my better days I was still just treading water. Each new task and obligation became another rock to carry as I struggled to keep my head above water. Over the last year, after a lot of soul-searching (and therapy) I came to the realization that I can’t do it anymore. All of this struggle – this thrashing and fighting against the current, this effort to beat back the tide that threatened to swallow me whole – was exhausting. The constant hustle and grind of a demanding job, alongside my equally demanding family life, had burned me out, and I was suffering for it. My work performance was deteriorating and worse, I felt disconnected from my body, which was crying out to demand my attention. I felt disconnected too from people I loved most – our interactions felt like they were transactions, like my overbooked schedule meant that I could eke out only the most superficial and watered-down engagement with those I cared about.
So this year I’ve vowed to do things differently. Floating (like swimming) has never come particularly easily for me but with some practice I’m sure I can get the hang of it. From what I’ve read, floating is really a form of surrender. You’re surrendering to forces beyond your control, and focusing instead on a few key things that will keep you alive. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution in the UK says that to float successfully, you should fight your instinct to panic or thrash about, lean back, keep calm, and breathe, which seems like good advice to avoid both a literal and a figurative drowning.
In the past I think I’ve dismissed the idea of floating – it felt like admitting defeat, or in the very least embracing a lack of progress. But in the end I had to ask myself how much progress I was even making with all of my treading water and thrashing about? And, more importantly, where was I even trying to get to? When you float, suspended in water, you feel a strange, ethereal lightness – like you’re no longer subject to the laws of gravity. You feel other things differently too – you’re more connected to your body as you hear your heart beating in your ears, and the pulsing quiet of life below the surface invites a feeling of harmony or oneness with something bigger than yourself. So for this year, my mantra will be float. I’ll try to remind myself to summon that sense of surrender, of peace, and of stillness the next time I feel the undertow dragging me down. And by year end, we’ll see where I wash ashore.
