This year will be Awe-Full
A note to re-read on the dark days
Happy 2024 to you :) If you’re new around here, Glitter and Biscuits is where I share essays and fieldnotes from my ongoing (twisting, turning) journey of creative reclamation. Writing here is both a weekly practice for me, and I hope a source of hope, comfort, inspiration and nourishment to you - whatever your version of creative living.
I’m writing this after a restful Christmas break, though noticing a reluctance to get going again. Once I stop, it’s hard to start. Particularly when I’m in more of an inner winter, than summer, which I am right now.
I often struggle with the heaviness of everyday living. There’s beauty and wonder as I look around, but also sadness, injustice and destruction. It’s not easy to see past the latter, and enjoy being alive. For me, 2023 demanded more energy than ever to move through the darkness and find gentle momentum, and in moments it felt wrong to do so.
With so many insurmountable, incomprehensible, heart-rending issues affecting human life - all of life - efforts to live more creatively can feel futile.
I’ve found myself wondering time and time again, what’s the point? Of documenting my journey here. Of writing my book. Of continuing to follow my curiosity, rather than the well-beaten path I was on for so many years. Perhaps it would be simpler - far easier - to go back to how life was when creative living was an abstract term. At times I wish I hadn’t woken up to its absence.
When I disappear down that hole, it becomes almost impossible to see inspiration in anything. Especially if I’m looking for it. Trying to crawl out of the funk and away from the darkness doesn’t work, not for me at least.
This morning as I stood on the driveway, car keys in hand, I looked up - and noticed the moon.
She was partly obscured by cloud, but shone bright in the morning sky.
Then I noticed a bird. He was defiant. Singing solo. Delighted about something, there’s no doubt about it. Despite the cold. Despite the main road rumbling in the distance.
A little later, on the drive home, I noticed a man carrying a rucksack. He wore a suit and a cosy-looking jacket, his earphones hugging the side of his head.
“I wonder who he is,” I thought. “He has a whole story. A family he came from. Perhaps a family of his own. I wonder what he’s listening to. Maybe he’s thinking of someone or something he loves. I wonder where he’s going.”
Whoever he was - in that moment - he seemed like a living, breathing miracle.
My drive home from my daughter’s bus-stop is not usually like this: If I’m in a ‘good’ place my mind still races through what must be done. Where I need to be, and by when. I only see the road directly in front of me.
When I’m in a darker place, my thinking is slower, but it’s trying to solve the problem. Trying to figure out why I feel the way I do.
But not today. The moment I saw the moon, awe pierced through the blur of my morning routine and found me.
What would it be like to live each day infused with awe?
To celebrate being here now, in these small ways. Drinking in the morning sky, the birds, a stranger. How they all fit together, in this wondrous universe we’re part of. Awe can be folded into life. It’s already here. Waiting.
What would it be like to experience dark moods with the same gentle presence?
Rather than spiral into despair, what would it be like to co-exist with the darkness? To experience it like birdsong. To listen to it.
What would it be like to trust there’s something worth discovering by choosing awe, even in those moments?
Sometimes I resist the practice of choosing a word for the year but not today:
I choose for Awe to infuse my experience of life this year.
The darkness will always be here, but awe will help my heart stay open. I don’t want to hide. I don’t want to give up. I want to take the next gentle step. Perhaps doing so will bring a little more light. Even if only a glimmer.
I’m sending you all my best as we enter this new year together.
With love,
Claire
Find me elsewhere:
Instagram: @clairemackinnonwrites
Website: clairemackinnon.com
LinkedIn: Claire Mackinnon
To an Awe-Filled Year, darling Claire!!! 🌟