Tag Archives: #journey

Resolution…Or A Nudge?

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Photo by Devon Janse van Rensburg on Unsplash

For the past few years, the Washington Post has provided an alternative to New Year’s Resolutions.  Instead of articulating the characteristics of a “good” resolution, it suggests that we adopt a nudge. 

I had to think about that for a while: What is a nudge, and how is it different from an intention?  As a devotee of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I am first struck by how it has leaked into our vernacular as a short-hand for sexual  innuendo (the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”  episode).  Moving on, one self-help coach, opines that “”If a stick is floating down a river and gets stuck… It just needs a little nudge and then it will get back into the flow of the river.”  Nudges are small but can have big effects. Chetan Bhagat adds that a nudge can be commonplace but “because it connects with you it holds meaning for you.”  So, if nudges are both commonplace and sometimes unpredictable, why try to adopt one? 

Well, having abandoned New Year’s Resolutions in my 20s (because they never lasted for more than a month), I discovered the nudge without anticipating it. 

A few decades ago, I slowly became aware that judgments infused almost every interaction.  Conversing with a colleague, my mind would remark, “he is a wonderful person, and his shoes are really great.”  Why is that a problem?  Because more often the automatic reaction was, “She is so smart, but I wonder why she can’t seem to get a flattering haircut.”  Routinely grasping for negative observations was accompanied by my ubiquitous irritation with people who didn’t act to make my world better: the person in line at the drug store who wanted to discuss their medications at length while I needed to get out of there ASAP, the jerk in the car that pulled in ahead of me to enter the freeway without a signal.  The list was endless. 

photo by Rashid on UnSplash

That year, in the middle of a yoga class where I was, as usual, assessing the quality of everyone else’s Warrior II pose, I came to an instant insight: my unkind thoughts harmed me, but not the other person.  The antidote came as a nudge: don’t resolve to stop thinking harshly – but instead embrace compassion.  I held the nudge of compassion through yoga and other moments of calm for most of that year and it changed me.  No, I am not perfect, but the judgment that colored my life gradually lifted with my nudge word. 

There we are: insights and subsequent nudges may be unpredictable, but they are not random.  We may not feel the nudge because we are not paying attention.  Nudges come and go every day, but when I carefully read a poem, I sometimes gasp because it says something that I have not been able to articulate – almost any Mary Oliver poem can do that.  Who is not nudged by her “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”   But I can also look for a nudge when I sense that need one – or, if New Year’s Day rolls around and I cannot resist the idea that every year brings something new.  If I am lucky, a word or image appears, and when I am paying attention, I can hold it and keep it as mine.

But as I contemplate how a spontaneous nudge can change me, I am also leery of how human beings invariably try to tame the ephemeral.  If you Google “nudge word”, you quickly come to social science, which tries to turn the expansive human experience into a solution for what ails us: “Nudge theory is a concept in behavioral economics, decision making, behavioral policy, social psychology, consumer behavior, and related behavioral sciences that proposes adaptive designs of the decision environment as ways to influence the behavior…of groups or individuals.” (Wikipedia)

Ouch — The social scientist’s nudge theory is designed to deliberately select small inputs to change people’s behavior in predictable ways.  This does not sound like Mary Oliver, who invariably directs our attention to surprise! 

In any case, my first experience of a nudge word, decades before it became “a thing”, suggests that when I am at a turning point, whether temporal, psychological, or spiritual, a word, phrase, or image can point a direction.  This year, the Washington Post’s article led me to the word Journey.  It feels like an appropriate invitation as I make deliberate choices to do less. 

Focus on what is now in my wild and precious life rather than plans, goals, or anything else that causes striving.  Chop wood, carry water.  Do the next best thing.  Take time to think about the journey and pay attention to what I can see right in front of me.  Take time to look back and ponder what I have learned.  Move, but not so fast that I don’t take time to observe…

Of course that is only a nudge….

Yet another threshold

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Photo by Max Harlynking on Unsplash

Too many people see the years beyond 70 as a static period in which there is little change, just a slowing down. But in Anam Cara, John O’Donohue encourages us to “visualize the mind as a tower of windows”:

Sadly, many people remain trapped at the one window, looking out every day at the same scene in the same way. Real growth is experienced when you draw back from that one window, turn, and walk around the inner tower of the soul and see all the different windows that await your gaze. Through these different windows, you can see new vistas of possibility, presence, and creativity

I have had to look through a lot of windows recently, and ones that I would not have chosen. However, although the paths taken have not been easy, each was part of a different journey in which I learned something about myself. Recently, someone asserted that my life was “really hard.” My immediate internal response was intense irritation, but I politely noted that my life was not so hard—after all, bad things happen to everyone. I quickly realized that I was annoyed because the kindly offered words did not acknowledge that I was grateful for the many blessings that accompanied the view from each unchosen and unanticipated window.

Photo by Remy Penet on Unsplash

By now, you’re probably wondering who is this person. I am a social scientist who is always gathering data and extrapolating from those data. I am also a deeply spiritual person, so I have the tendency to infuse my experiences—which might, on the surface, look ordinary—with spiritual meaning to deepen my understanding of our lives during these challenging times.

As we age, many of us view our lives as a series of milestones and thresholds that are usually clothed in ritual. For some, a milestone marks the completion or culmination of something (e.g., college degree, wedding anniversary, retirement, death of a loved one, etc.), whereas a threshold signals the commencement or start of something (e.g., wedding, career or life transition, relocation, etc.). Crossing a new threshold is always a challenge and requires a certain amount of trust.

Nearly three years ago, for example, I said goodbye to my late husband, Jerry. This was not how the two of us had envisioned growing old together. Instead, I was called to do such difficult, intense, and sacred work as Jerry’s primary caregiver for seven years…and now that work was over—a major milestone for me. Shortly thereafter, I crossed a threshold and slowly embarked on a journey of grieving—a journey made more complicated by the COVID restrictions.

Fast-forward 15 months. My journey of more-or-less solitary grieving ended abruptly—a milestone for me—when a routine blood test revealed chronic leukemia. Even though I still had more grieving to do, the social scientist in me volunteered to participate in a 15-month clinical research trial—another threshold and a healing journey for me in the company of dedicated caregivers/researchers.

Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

Along the way, I encountered two unplanned pauses when nasty falls resulted in broken bones in both of my hands, my wrist, and later my kneecap. In each case, I was forced to slow down even more and give my body the time it still needed to heal. Because, on both occasions, I needed to be cared for more intensely, I joined a larger group of elderly people who were no longer able to live independently. This was, for me, a very new journey into vulnerability and community.

Gratefully, my disease is now in remission and my bones are healing—a milestone for me—and I can begin to allow myself to look through new windows at possible future thresholds. Unlike the thresholds of the last decade that I could not ignore, this time I get to decide which doors and thresholds I will open and cross.

John O’Dononue offers this blessing for “a new beginning”:

Awaken your spirit to adventure,

Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,

For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

— To Bless the Space between Us

Although I’ve faced many (sometimes abrupt) beginnings in my life, I’m still not comfortable being vulnerable—or not knowing what comes next. Here are the questions that now consume my anticipated re-entry into a “new normal”: How can I take all that I’ve learned over these challenging years and choose among “all the different windows” that await my gaze? How can I make sure that the threshold I am about to cross will nurture my well-being and resilience? And, perhaps most critical, what might be holding me back?

Photo by Les Argonautes on Unsplash

I now can see that I will not have answers to these questions before it is time for me to step gingerly across yet another threshold as it appears in this wild journey called life. To avoid stasis and “just a slowing down,” I must be content to make a choice and, in the words of Jan Richardson, writer, artist, and ordained Methodist minister, “Let what comes, come.”