Happy 2013

Instead of a raft of resolutions, just choose one habit to change in 2013. If you're giving up something you really love (tobacco, alcohol or caffeine, for example) then you will probably lack focus for anything else. If you're determining to be kinder or more compassionate, or less confrontational, or a better listener, that will be just as difficult as giving up a chemical. Hour by hour, day by day, inhale, exhale, that's the way.

Or, if you're determined to have more than one resolution, then leave the second one until February, and the third one till March. Have some compassion for your mortal frame, as the good book says. And always start with the end in mind. You might not reach it, but you won't be aimless.

Peace and fire!

Laying Aside Every Weight

Distractions are easy to accumulate. Not only that, but they eventually become like an addiction, a compulsive disorder that we strangely seek out to deflect us from the real work that we should be doing. How does that happen?

I'm beginning to think that for me it's composed of two different fears. The first fear is of missing something, a fear that many of us had as children and teenagers. We daren't not be present to the social demands of the moment, in case something fun and sociable happens that we then miss completely, and so feel unloved.

The second fear, for me, is of the depth of the focus and the solitude that I really need to write creatively. I do get into that space sometimes, and I'm often not sure how I will get out again. It's as if I might disappear in there, or maybe die, like the old Jewish high priest in the holy of holies - I need someone to tie a rope around my feet so I can be dragged out if I give into the silence too much and it overwhelms my sanity, or even takes my life.

And yet, allowing someone else to remove me from that sacred space before I had given everything to it would be a kind of sacrilege. Perhaps, at bottom, it's just the fear of death itself. Of course, this thinking has no merit whatever - it's far better to die in the holy of holies confronting the ineffable than to die among the moneychangers and dove-sellers in the courtyard outside. And die we surely will.

So, if I can give up the need for external approvals, for regular signs of progress and praise, for the lure of the marketplace and the charm and cashflow of the barrow-boy, perhaps I can train myself, discipline myself differently, to approach the creating space where the creative power of the universe hangs out, dangerous and offering no guarantees other than that of solitude and silence. Perhaps I can put aside the distractions, lay aside every weight in pursuit of the things that give living its juice, its fire. It's really just a case of choosing what to miss - the missable or the unmissable.