18. Abracadabra
In which I talk about how I want to live in the coming year
Hello, friends.
The second half of 2023 has brought a lot of challenges, mostly health-related. I still don’t have a proper diagnosis of what’s been causing me sleepless nights and great physical discomfort, but I’m generally okay. However, I do feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time worrying and trying to distract myself from my worries through totally unproductive pursuits.
Now that I’ve had a bit of a break from work, I’ve been thinking about what my priorities are and planning for the year ahead. The mere practice of thinking intently has become a luxury for me these days—it feels like for the last few months, all I’ve been able to do is react as best as I could to the things that life has been throwing at me. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way. There are so many things that seem to have completely slipped out of our control and many of us are starting to feel like we’ve been reduced to being spectators to the many ways our lives and those of others get closer to the brink of disaster.
A recent New Scientist headline suggested that 2024 might officially usher in the Antrhopocene age. I’m no longer shocked by this. 2023 has shown us that we have entered the age of catastrophe, with wars erupting, natural disasters multiplying and the boundaries of human cruelty being pushed further right on our screens on a regular basis.
It’s no longer a question of what is coming, or even when or how. We can see the future now, reflected in the terror-filled eyes of Palestinians in Gaza, in the rubbles of bombed-out neighbourhoods in Ukraine and Syria, in what has been lost in unprecedented numbers of wildfires, storms and floods.
The question is what do we do in the face of a bleak future, and how do we even plan for it?
I don’t have the answers, not for everyone, but I’m rethinking my priorities now with the intention to focus on the things that matter the most. One of the things I came up with is this ‘action plan’ which I’m sharing with those who are feeling lost and would like some guideposts to making sense of life in these truly confusing times. I will also be building my work, including this newsletter, on this action plan in 2024.
Create and nurture your creative space. One thing I’ve learned over the last year is that it’s not the size of the space that matters but how you nurture it. We spent the last couple of years trying to make a life in the countryside, only to experience all sorts of problems, including—rather unexpectedly—illness-inducing air pollution. I’ve loved my time in a rural environment, but now, as we search for a healthier place, that’s no longer my priority. I don’t care anymore about living in a big house either—I have to keep reminding myself that when I was a child, I didn’t even have my own bed, and my private space was mostly in my head, and that I didn’t get to even have my own room until I moved out at the ripe old age of 26.
Develop and maintain creative habits. One of the main lessons I learned as an adult is the importance of having a creative life outside of work or school. As someone whose main occupation is editing and writing, I’ve taught myself to draw and paint, and dabble in crafts such as crochet. But these creative habits aren’t limited to the usual art and craft stuff. There’s a joy in putting your creativity to use even in the mundane and ordinary, such as cooking. I’ve discovered that there’s nothing quite like trying out a new recipe or finding out how to make one of your favourite dishes that remind you of your childhood or your old home.
Define your worldview. In her excellent new book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein talks about how the Covid pandemic has given birth to strange alliances between far-left and hard-right conspiracy theorists, New Age health obsessives and anti-vaxxers, neo-Nazis, and formerly apolitical small business owners and scared parents who were left outraged by the lack of clear government guidance and confused by the constant barrage of misinformation being spewed from all directions online.
When you’re bombarded with so much information on a daily basis, it can be really hard to find out way around the constantly changing narratives coming from all sides of the political spectrum and to know which ones we can trust and which ones we shouldn’t. Times like this beg for a constant reminder of what our worldview is and stress the necessity of filtering what we read and hear through the values by which we intend to live.
Be your own anthropologist. There’s so much information being fed to us almost every moment of our lives, so it’s a good idea to just keep checking in with ourselves and taking stock of who we are and what we stand for by taking literal ‘field notes’ of the meaningful moments that occur in our daily conversations with ourselves and other people.
Fight for a cause. We all feel strongly about at least one thing–homelessness, the rise of tyrannies and the erosion of human rights, the refugee crisis, the environment. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that you don’t have to feel helpless about an issue that you care about, no matter how little power you think you hold. The best path is to learn about it as much as you can and to share that knowledge with other people.
Next year’s newsletters will revolve around these topics. They’re not meant to be prescriptive, of course, as I myself am still trying to figure out the best way through the chaos. But maybe we can find our way together. Maybe there’s a way to fend off the fear and hopelessness.
As I’m writing this final part of the newsletter, my beloved cat Ollie is in the emergency veterinary hospital in Cardiff, with my husband and kids watching over him, as the vets try to figure out if they can save him from a disease that’s causing his lungs to fill up with fluid. I’ve just spent the last hour crying hysterically over the phone with my husband, because we were presented with the option to just let him go now or to allow them to perform surgery on him. I knew that this moment would come eventually, but nothing prepares you for terror and the sadness and the weight of the decision you have to make. I’m here at home with our other cat Ellie. I asked my husband to see if the vet can try and give Ollie a fighting chance. I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do. All I know is that I don’t want us to just give up on him.
I hope your 2024 starts on a calmer, happier note.
It was the Roman physician Quintus Serenus Sammonicus who came up with the idea 2000 years ago for keeping death at bay by hanging a word across one’s chest. The word was ‘abracadabra,’ which literally means ‘send your fire to death,’ or as Eduardo Galeano phrased it, ‘give your fire until the last of your days.’ This is me, in pain, in hope, saying and living ‘abracadabra.’
