Monday, January 4, 2010

Be

A hundred years ago, when I started this blog, I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love and was taken with the idea of her giving a word to each city. This year, both MPJ and JW have chosen words for the new year. I think this started several years ago. I can't remember if it is from the book. One of my yoga teachers also does it. I see it as a take on the New Year's Resolution, perhaps one a bit more open-ended that declaring that one will exercise three times a week or lose 15 pounds or what have you. This year, I want to play too, and I have chosen my word.

My word is be.

Whatever I am doing, I want to do it totally, without looking forward with anxiety or back with regret.

I am being now, sipping a glass of yesterday's pinot noir while Amelia naps, and writing. I was being earlier this afternoon, when I found my distressed, still-sleepy baby wide-eyed in her co-sleeper, and I lay down with her and nursed her back to sleep. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of my teeshirt. I was being this morning, when I put on some beautiful music and began to write the moment A went down for her morning nap. And I was being 45 minutes later, when the nap ended, and I picked up my smiling, cooing baby and brought her downstairs to dance and sing.

This year, my first full year of motherhood, I sense the danger of the never-enough, of the constant feeling that there is more I should be doing, that there is too much I am not getting done. I want to try to live in the moment, enjoying all of the love and the blessings I am so lucky to be surrounded with.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

So well written. You've inspired me to choose my own.

MamaN said...

Oh, that all mothers would choose this word, this commitment "to be." No regrets about the past, no anxious thoughts about the future, just focus on the present. What a fulfilling frame of mind that is!

Mary (MPJ) said...

Great word! I love the focus on the present. :)

This is my third year with a word of the year. I just checked, and if I follow the trail back from the post where I pick my first word of the year, it leads back to this post by you: Word for New Year. So, it looks like your yoga teacher (in combination with Eat, Pray, Love) was the original inspiration for all of us! :)