A casual stroll away from the anxiety of extremes.
Twenty-two days into 2026. This year feels tight. Schedules are full of intentional choices, surprises, good and bad. Our platter of memory is being added to daily. Air is clear and crisp, the sun making a few appearances, despite the PNW’s notoriety for rain. Frost sits, unbothered in the long shadows cast by northern latitude. The world is full of contrasts. I long to be liminal.
My words this year are “listening” and “truth.” At the heart of these selections is an urge to step away from the intensity of previous perspectives. This all or nothing feeling has directed my life more than I care to admit. It has kept me from exploring, extinguished curiosity, crushed creativity. It has turned mistakes I could have learned from into existential threats.
What a person wants often comes with what they do not want. I wrote something the other day, a feeling that might quantify the attitude I long to sever from:
“I find so much joy in the simple things, and often make the dumbest of mistakes, that I worry I’ll appear a simpleton at best, and at worst an idiot.”
Looking at it now, this is both a harsh statement and true to my feelings. Most important, it is an example of mental scaffolding that needs examination. An unfair and extreme hypothesis, without the cushion of nuance. Rinse and repeat this attitude for a myriad of moments and thought.
But 2026. This year of listening requires I turn my ear to these thoughts so maybe they don’t have to be as loud. Let them sit and be as they are. Then gently respond with truth. And “truth” is not synonymous with “all answers at all times.” Truth allows for liminal spaces, the hazy hallways of yes, no, and everything in between. An acknowledgment that sometimes the reality is far more complicated or even different than your valid feelings can express.
Listening and truth extend externally as well. I want truth in voicing a dissent, rather than the quasi-peace of dishonest silences. I hope to listen when my heart stirs, noticing what it stirs to, and inviting others along, not undone by an RSVP of “no.” I want to hear the truth of others, in their actions and ideas, and act accordingly.
There is so much noise we would label as music, so much data we would label as truth. So many extremes that cause us to over index and miss the in between. Extremes that keep us from making the phone call, sending the email, getting outside, writing the newsletter. And yes, it is an extreme to divorce oneself from previous ways of thought. But the honest truth is, I do like a sprinkling of drama as I walk away from my relationship with a bad perspective. I love to smile and laugh, and I equally take myself far too seriously. I’m listening.