January Intentions
One evening last month I was out walking, taking in the holiday lights in the neighborhood and talking to a friend on the phone. Julia and I have known each other for 20 years, but these days live across the country from one another. When we met, she was fresh out of a graduate degree in classical guitar and doing an intensive year of flamenco training. I was brand new to Albuquerque, and trying to figure out what pieces of a pianist’s life I was going to bring and build upon in New Mexico. Today, Julia lives with her 12-old-son and husband in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and teaches high school Spanish. She texts me questions about gardening; in exchange for tips on roses, I ask her about Spanish’s confusing reflexive verbs. These days we talk infrequently, and see each other even less often, but still she remains an important piece of my world and my extended community.
And so, that December night we were catching up, circling through both the muck and the lights of our days and weeks and months since we last spoke. Specifically, we found ourselves comparing notes on our lives at this particular point in time: at the end of 2023, in a world that claims to be post-pandemic and moving forward. “Remember the days of lockdown?” I asked Julia. “Those days that were so dark and isolated and lonely and NOT BUSY? Remember how we all claimed we were going to learn something from that time? Do you think we learned anything that stuck?”
She paused. “I don’t know. It sure seems like we’ve just slipped back into our old selves and old behaviors, doesn’t it?”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this puzzle. This question of whether or not we changed on any level, whether any good habits forged during the pandemic stayed with us, whether any practices we created to help us survive carried forward. Sometimes it doesn’t just feel like we slipped back into our old patterns, but rather that we dove back recklessly and with great abandon.
January always feels like an auspicious time to ponder practices of all kinds. “Do you make New Year’s Resolutions?” a friend asked me over drinks a few days before Christmas. I dodged the question, thinking I am better suited for seasonal intentions than annual behavior modifications. But my friend Kate wouldn’t let it go. “I’ve got a resolution this year: I’ve got to do something about my hamstrings.”
“Wow,” I said. “What exactly are you going to do about them?”
Of course, that’s the rub, isn’t it? We were determined to change, to learn something during the pandemic and to come out with new better selves. The problem is we were both too specific (Hamstrings!) and not specific enough (“…do something…”). That’s always the problem with practices or intentions of any kind: we often lack clear direction or steps about how this grand thing is going to happen.
Or that certainly seems to be the case in my world. We start well—Eat less sugar!—but fall apart with the details of our noble plan. After all, what constitutes “less?” Only on Mondays? Only after dinner? Only chocolate? I know that an assignment that reads “Practice Debussy” is almost a guarantee for unfocused work on the piano bench. Specifics matter. Details count.
Sometimes I wonder if in the end the point isn’t the big gestures of intentions or resolutions, but instead the point is the details, the smallest shift in behavior, the slightest recalibration of direction. If we are paying attention to the details of our lives, maybe the patterns fall into place.
The first piano lesson of a new year. The ten minutes sorting through the tax file. The half-hour in the garden pulling weeds and starting to clear out flowerbeds. The hour drinking coffee with a former student home for the holidays. The afternoon spent snowshoeing on the mountain. The forty minutes in the pool at dawn and the twenty minutes on the meditation cushion before bed. The tiniest sliver of a moon last Friday night. The last bite of Christmas chocolate. The light that grows noticeably longer and brighter with every passing day. The birds that have finally found the new feeder in the courtyard. The new blank notebook. The candles lit over a quiet Tuesday night dinner. The one, two, three pots of tea consumed while re-reading a favorite book. The evening walk in the dark, with a dear friend on the other end of the line.
