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In Culture, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Personal Growth, Relationships, Speaking, University, Writing

3 Words for 2021

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on

Every year I choose 3 words to focus on. For 2021, I picked peace, priorities and potential (can you tell I’m in a poetry class in my final semester of my undergrad and we are focusing on techniques like alliteration?).

Living into these words looks different from year to year, but I like the process of noticing how they filter into my life month by month, and then reflecting on them at the end of the year. This is what I’m hoping to discover with each of these words:

Peace

I think of peace not as a permanent state of being but as a worthy goal to aim for. I long for peace in my relationships, within my own mind and heart, and for my words and actions to reflect peace toward others and the larger world. For me, peace is best achieved through controlled, deep breathing and meditation to slow my thoughts down. When I fail to achieve peace by speaking rudely to others or thinking violent thoughts, I try to centre myself, apologize, and try again to promote peace from the inside out.

Priorities

As Queen Oprah once said, “There’s no such thing as balance, only choices.” In 2021, I want to make better use of my time by better managing my choices. I try to remember Annie Dillard’s wise words, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Years ago, I practiced saying no to what I didn’t want to do in order to have more time for what I really wanted to accomplish. Now, it’s much harder than that, for I have to say no to things I like in order to make space for what I love. My key priorities this year are writing, speaking, graduating university, resting and nurturing those I’m closest to (and being nurtured by them in return).

Potential

Late last year, I heard Rob Bell say in one of his RobCast’s, “As writers, we have to make peace with unrealized potential.” I loved this quote so much that I wrote it down and stuck it above my writing desk. Potential has long been the bane of my existence. For decades, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. The fear that I was wasting my potential dogged me every single day. I’m exhausted by fighting with my own “unrealized potential.” This is the year I’m determined to lay down this endless grudge match with myself. I’m going to struggle with this concept until I’ve made peace with it.

What are your words for 2021? What areas of growth would you like to focus on in the coming year?

In Culture, Identity, Minimalism, Nurture, Parenting, Personal Growth, Relationships

Space

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on
Space

Lately I’ve had one word front and centre in my mind and experience: SPACE.

Space to be human. Space to breathe. Space to exist, to think, to discover, to play.

In our modern existence, where so much of life is done behind a screen (or one of my biggest pet peeves, which proves we are living in the forecasted future robot age: people walking in public spaces while staring vacantly at a tiny glowing machine in their hand), anything that brings us back to our own bodies and offers space from machines is becoming an urgent priority.

At the beginning of May, Jason and I went to Seattle to see Rob Bell on his Holy Shift tour. We met up with 4 friends who flew in from Calgary for the evening and a marvellous time was had by all. Both Rob Bell and his opening act (the hilarious Irish author Peter Rollins, who introduced himself by saying “I sell existential despair for money”) mentioned the word space during the tour. I love that feeling of kismet, when you are pondering a concept and others are recognizing its importance at the same time.

We have to work harder than ever to build space into our lives. For me, minimalism is a helpful container for the idea of space, because minimalism is about stripping away what doesn’t matter so we can isolate what we actually do prioritize. Space facilitates this process, for we need to intentionally dial down cultural noise in order to arrive at what we are really on this earth to be or do.

Pete Rollins spoke about how we have to define ourselves by who we aren’t before we can figure out who we are. This has stuck with me. Space comes into this because we are in desperate need of room to explore and discover what matters most to us in a world that is constantly invested in selling us what we don’t require.

I’m working on creating space in several areas of my life:

My Schedule

I’ve never been happier than now, when I’ve cut so much out of my calendar. Saying no to things I don’t want to do feels bloody fantastic and gives me leisure time to enjoy the activities I do want to do.

My Relationships

Carefully curating the people I allow into my inner circle has radically shifted my peace of mind. I want safe people around me. Encouraging ones. Friends who make me laugh. Those I can count on to tell the truth and be there when the chips are down.

My Inner Life

This one is critical. It involves refusing to stop scrolling through my phone whenever I have a spare moment. I’m determined to allow space here for my soul to expand, breathe, heal and grow. 

Our world is a dangerous, unsettled place and we need every available person to wake up and stop numbing with distractions. We need to tune back in, to ourselves first, and then to other actual human beings. To listen to one another. This is the way back home, to better priorities and more meaningful values.

For the last few months I’ve been trying a “name tag” experiment where I refer to anyone in a name tag by their name. I attempt to start a conversation, even if it’s awkward (especially if it’s awkward). The amount of people ordering coffees or buying groceries while staring mindlessly at their phones is alarming. Real flesh-and-blood people are serving us and we can’t even make eye contact? I’m done doing that. My phone stays in my purse.

Space is a valuable commodity. Let’s build it in. The process of waking up to our own lives is profound. Everything has been here, this whole time…trees, sun, flowers, birds singing, cats sleeping curled up like croissants, mothers walking down the street holding hands with toddlers, the barista carefully preparing your specialty coffee while she is being ignored, the people we love most going about their lives while we’ve been too busy to dial in and notice.

Make the space. You won’t get chances forever. The good stuff is right here, right now. It’s time to wake up and pay attention.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Relationships

Real Surrender

Author Julianne HarveyPosted on Leave a comment
Real Surrender

I know I write a lot about acceptance, surrender, letting go of what we cannot change. This is because it’s so damn challenging for me. I think I have it under control, then something else happens to knock me off my game and I have no other choice but to practice this skill once again.

I find it hard to believe when people say they don’t struggle with acceptance. I’ve heard versions of “I just let it go” with a breezy flip of the hair and a general sense of how easy this is. Without fail, every time, I think to myself, “Bullshit.”

Real surrender over circumstances and people is hard. It’s a process, where you don’t get to skip any steps. It’s not easy for a reason. The meaning is found in the struggle. We should be wrestling with what wounds us. We have all been hurt, let down, lost, bewildered.

Real SurrenderWe can’t have it all. That’s a bold-faced lie. What we do have is choices. One after another, day in and day out, then each of these accumulated decisions determines the quality of our lives. Who we spend the bulk of our time with matters. We influence each other.

Wanting a healthy life requires courage. It doesn’t just happen, in and of itself. Our intentions determine our outcomes. We can’t simply float along, at the whim of other people’s decisions, opinions and beliefs, and think that we are in charge of our own destiny. That’s an immature, guarded and small way of life.

But stepping out, as our authentic selves, carries a price tag. You will disappoint some people, many of whom will be close to you. Grieving these lost and broken relationships will be painful. The sharp, piercing sadness will fade, but I’m a few years into it and it never goes away completely.

Especially around the holidays, when opportunities to practice letting go of expectations are all around you. We cannot control what other people say or do (or what they don’t say or don’t do). We must let go of the dream of how we want a situation to be. We just don’t have that kind of power.

I’m learning to focus on the good that has resulted from the losses I’ve sustained. If I make a list of the benefits I enjoy on a daily basis from the hard decisions I’ve made with some relationships, it ends up as a long and rich accounting. Focusing on what has been left behind only paralyzes me in grief. If I want to keep moving forward (and I do), it’s necessary to celebrate what has made my current, joyful life possible, not what or who might be absent from it.

To anyone feeling lost and bereft in these days leading up to Christmas, you are not alone. Surrender. Let go. Allow yourself to accept all that you cannot control so that you can see the good things and people in your life that you feel grateful for.

Try not to fixate on what’s gone and what may never be again. Let it run through your fingers like sand. Turn to those who are there for you – who love and accept you, exactly as you are – for they will make up your future. This is what matters; not what is gone, but what you have gained by your honest choices and what will continue to bloom in the years to come.