To Reflect and Resolve: A New Years Non-Resolution
It’s that Reflect and Resolve time of year and, as usual, I find myself dragging my heels. Maybe I don’t WANT to reflect or resolve anything. Or maybe I’m scared of what I might find if I peel back the Curtain of Reflection and take an honest look at the past year.
Ok. Deep breath. Maybe just a peek.
Last year I resolved, publicly and poetically, not to make resolutions. To ‘resolve not to resolve’ and to listen to the space between heart beats for an invitation to connect more deeply with the uniqueness that is you. Or me. Whatever. It was very lovely and many people on social media hearted it.
Then, quietly, out of public view, I totally made some resolutions. Resolutions that would make 2018 my Best Year Ever!
I’d do Public Speaking and get paid Lots of Money!
I’d launch a New Flagship Program and Change Lives!
I’d make my bed Every Day!
None of those happened. Whoops. I reckon my year was fine, but sure did screw the pooch on those (quiet, private) resolutions.
I understand the drive to Reflect and Resolve. And I resist it, trying to find a powerful way to launch into the new year that doesn’t involve a to do list of accomplishments and SMART goals.
This year, that effort has given birth to a question: What if I (and you. . .and you) were a verb?
In her remarkable book Braiding Sweetgrass (which I will continue telling everyone about until you’ve read it), Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about her efforts to learn the Potawatomi language. She runs into a ton of challenges, one of which is that whereas English is composed of 30 percent verbs, in Potawatomi the proportion is closer to 70 percent.
Words that we consider to be nouns like Saturday or Bay are, in that language, verbs.
Confronted with this grammatical conundrum, Kimmerer is understandably frustrated. Then she has a realization:
A bay is a noun only if water is dead. When bay is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores and contained by the word. But the verb wiikwegamaa–to be a bay–releases the water from bondage and lets it live. “To be a bay” holds the wonder that, for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with cedar roots and flock of baby mergansers. Because it could do otherwise-become a stream or an ocean or a waterfall, and there are verbs for that, too. To be a hill, to be a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, all are possible verbs in a world where everything is alive.
Reading Kimmerer’s words, my brain flitted to an old Jewish tale featuring Rabbi Zusha, one of those archetypal figures who pop up in Jewish lore, both real historical people and mythic embodiments of wisdom.
Anyway, in this story, Zusha is approaching the end of his life and his students find him sobbing on his deathbed in terror. ‘Why are you afraid?’ they ask, ‘Haven’t you taught us that all living things must die? Surely death does not hold fear for you?’
‘Yup,’ said Zusha, ‘All living things must die.’
‘Well, then’ one of the students said (trying to be helpful), ‘Be not afraid! You have lived a rich life with as much faith as Abraham. You have followed the commandments as carefully as Moses.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Zusha (I imagine that he may have been slightly, if compassionately, pissed off that he had to teach even as his life ebbed away), ‘If God asks me why I was not more like Abraham, it’s fine. I can reply ‘because I was not Abraham. Same thing with Moses.
I’m upset because I’m wondering what I’ll reply if God asks me why I was not more like Zusha.’
All of which is a long winded way of getting to this question: ‘What if you were a verb?’
Implicit in this question is a way of being that embodies action. If I am a verb, then I do not just ‘do’ things, I am the doing. I am, intrinsically, embodied action. And since I am a verb different than you, the doing that is me is unique.
What if your job is simply to embody your action as fully as possible?
If we peel back another layer, we can see that if we are verbs, then our action is incredibly complex.
Let’s take an easy one: To Run.
As soon as you read that, chances are you immediately understood it. Maybe you even got an image or a felt sense of the verb.
Now take a moment to break down the millions of processes embedded in that simple verb, to run.
When I run, my heart beats faster pumping blood and oxygen through my body. Each time my foot hits the ground, hundreds of stabilizing muscles leap into action to keep my body from toppling over. My eyes scan the ground for possible obstacles. They relay that information to my brain which sends signals to my body to avoid that pile of dog crap or jutting piece of concrete.
It’s a lot.
Now imagine that something goes awry with even one of those processes. A couple of stabilizing muscles fail to fire, a bird flies by and distracts the eyes from the ground, the heart skips a beat. All of a sudden, to run transforms into to trip or to fall.
Just like to run, the verb that is you contains thousands of embedded actions and processes, all of which, ideally, work together towards the execution of your action.
But we don’t live in an ideal world, so chances are a few of those processes are a little out of whack or misfiring.
All of which brings me to this year’s non-resolution. I’m spending some time reflecting on these questions; feel free to play along:
- If I am a unique verb, then what is my action? What distinguishes ‘To Michael Kass’ from, say, ‘To Ryan Reynolds?’ (rhetorical question, no need to answer)
- What are at least 10 of the processes embedded in ‘Michael Kass’ing?
- Of those, which are working less than optimally or even inhibiting action?
- What small, actionable steps can I take to bring those processes back into alignment so I can Michael Kass more effectively?
And that’s it–reflection and resolution accomplished!
(also, this is totally the year I write that book) (Happy New Year!)
