Newsletters keep popping cheerily into my inbox. And I keep pressing the little ‘bin’ sign. Not sure about you, but my head needs emptying, rather than filling up.
So, if you’ve clicked Open rather than Delete and you’re reading this, heartfelt appreciation from me!
Carving up time
The last few months of 2023 were productive and busy. Time was measured (not in coffee spoons) but in segments of minutes and hours.
I had to slice it up like a cake every day and share segments out amongst (what felt like) a horde of demanding children: my software business, training for clients, freelance writing and delivering copy, and building my audience for my own courses.
And during this heavily segmented, busy time, I found myself drawn to this collection of pebbles on my bookshelf.
Aren’t they magnificent? Like little planets of possibilities, rounded chunks of Big Time.
Some nights, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I would stroke one, hold another between my fingers, feel the heft of the large one in my palm.
Planets of possibility
Why do these stones feel so precious, so laden with a wordless energy for me? I’m not really sure, but maybe if I set the scene it’ll help me to make sense of their weightiness.
In October this year, my mum and I spent two weeks in the south of France with family we hadn’t seen for (too) many years. My cousin and his partner took us on a road trip to Bayonne, a town on the southwestern edge of France. When we arrived at their friend’s house (where we would spend two nights), the sun was just about to set. So, we deposited all our luggage, piled back into cars along with our hosts, and headed to the beach to catch the sun’s slow sinking into the Atlantic Ocean.
A pebbled beach
My mum found a bench from which to watch the passing parade, and I slipped off my shoes and stepped onto the pebbled shore. I wandered away from the others (who hadn’t seen each other in ages and were caught up in intense conversations), to take in the wild waves and the unfamiliar sight of a pebble-strewn beach, (not the soft white sands of our beaches in Cape Town).
I soon realised why no one else had taken off their shoes, as walking barefoot here began to feel like an intense reflexology session. So I plonked myself down, dug my heels into the cold, grainy beach and began to play with the pebbles.
(Video may play better on phone than on computer screen.)
Big Time
They lay weightily in my palm, cool and rounded, with so many colours and striations. I let them fall through my fingers, picked first one up then another, turned each rounded miracle over and let its strips of colour, its grooves and ridges talk to me.
They spoke to me of Big Time, of oceans washing over the sea bed, waves crashing into rocks, the constant friction of other pebbles, rolling and tumbling together in the deep. Wordlessly they told me that storms can be weathered, and that you can find yourself washed up on a wide, cold beach and feel the cool fingers of an early winter sun stroking your face.
And I couldn’t bear to let these fall back through my fingers onto the beach. So I tucked them into my jacket pocket, enjoying the crunching sound they made. And a week later, I brought them back with me to Cape Town, laid them out on a small round tray on my bookshelf and promised myself I’d play with them as soon as all the projects and training were delivered for the year.
Preparing to rest
So at the start of this holiday season, I prepared my daybed (which has been sorely neglected since winter). I washed the covers, swept all the dead leaves out from underneath the bed and cleaned the cushion covers. Then I brought out my pebbles and a wooden bowl filled with water, settled in on my day bed and played.
(Video may play better on phone than on computer screen.)
Lifting each stone from the water, rubbing my thumb along its cool surface, letting it settle back into the bowl was a soothing ritual that signalled to my overwrought mind that it was time to quieten down.
Resting
It was a way to announce to myself that I was officially on holiday…and that I had full permission to soak up the utter luxury of big time, no time… the timeless time of reading, swimming, chatting, napping and BEING.
What a relief it has been to give in to the feeling of being wrung out, and give myself permission to loll about in various cool, shady spots. (Here in the southern hemisphere, it’s summer.)
Deep rest
As Helena Fitzgerald described in this article, this time between Christmas and New Year’s Eve in the West may be “the only collective chance for deep rest all year… the closest thing we have in our society to some kind of a communal pause… It is a time against ambition and against striving. Whatever we hoped to finish is either finished or it’s not going to happen this week, and all our successes and failures from the previous year are already tallied up. It’s too late for everything; (it) is the luxurious relief of giving up.”
This Being Week has been blissfully lazy, with my main concern being what book to read next. I’ve been soaking up the feeling of no expectations, nowhere to be, nothing to do.
But already now, I feel the world nipping at my ankles, her soft knocking on my closed bedroom door to pull me away from Being to Doing.
Emails offer brief glimpses (before I delete) of January Resets, 30-day Yoga challenges, my own list of things to do during the holidays catches my eye, and I feel the pressure starting to build. The inner and outer pressure to learn, to grow, to improve.
One rounded pebble at a time
But for now, I will keep my door closed to the world. I will reach over to my pebble collection and select one. Turn it over, smooth in my fingers. Feel its cool weight in my palm. And I will keep the world at bay for just that little bit longer.
No small amount of longing for just this. Thank you for the tender invitation.
Time to play... Vital, vitalising