Cameron: In 2022 I really want to learn how to do a loud whistle. Happy to take Zoom lessons from any Person of LWON, because then I will only be spitting at my laptop and not in your face. Husband told me I should maybe choose a more pandemic-appropriate skill.
Christie: Cameron, when I was a kid I spent a long period (it felt like a year, but I was a kid so it was probably only a few weeks) trying to learn to whistle, and I totally failed. I mean, I still can only barely whistle, which is a bummer when you have dogs. If you find a good lesson, let me know. I’d love to join!
Jane: I can’t whistle at all (or snap my fingers) so this sounds like an impressive goal to me.
Ann: And I used to be able to both whistle and snap my fingers, now only rudimentarily. But I’m getting better at yawning, really yawning hard, getting all that air in and getting it all back out again. For 2022, I’ll get even better — I’ve always been kind of a half-assed yawner.
Craig: This is a good time to learn deep breathing. I’ve been taking too many short breaths lately. That might be an aspiration for the new year, full aspirations [Ed.: I see that, smartypants Craig.]
Helen: Resolution for 2022: since I was 20 or so my resolution has been to floss every day, but I actually do that now, thanks to being afraid to go to the dentist in the first year of the pandemic. So I’m looking for a new one [Ed.: a new what? dentist? year? pandemic? oh, a new resolution.] now. Maybe something about PT [Ed.: Physical Therapy, right?] exercises. I’ve done PT multiple times for different problems and have loved it every time.
Kate: I’d like to look out the window more often. Ideally, I’d do it often enough to rewire my muscle memory so that any time I experience a moment’s idleness or need a break, instead of opening a social media app or the news, I look outside (or even…go outside). There are so many good birds out there. And, this time of year in Maine, so many dogs in little winter coats. Once in a while one of them even has a hat on.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, I’ll lose the damn weight.
Finish the dang book.
Learn to accept what’s happening to my neck.
Hug people as much as is allowed.
Richard: Lose five more pounds–and greet 2023 at exactly that weight. [Ed.: that is, the weight that you lost in 2020 — see Brags post — minus five, right? yes?]
Emily: -Stop making unfavorable comparisons between my own physical appearance and that of the cat. Try to accept and love my human form, with all its imperfections and limitations.
-Stop stealing food from parents’ freezer, even if they do overbuy at Costco. This is wrong.
-Flirt not with despair.
-Cling not to false hope.
-Tempt not disaster.
[Ed.: Dear Reader, shall we say those last three again, as with one voice raised on high? Cling not to false hope. Tempt not disaster. Flirt not with despair.]
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Photo: Looking for an aspirational dove in flight, found the more realistic chicken going as fast as it can, by alvesgaspar via Wikimedia Commons
Craig, I have found what I believe may be the key to deep breathing…remembering to exhale.
You may choose those last three lines, but my mantra for 2022 may have to be the photo caption – Look for the aspirational dove in flight, but be content with a chicken going as fast as it can.
(Ed.: Yes, well, that too, Nancy. In fact, I think you’re right.
My aspirations are few: Finally kick Long Covid to the curb (20 months now) then put on a backpack and go hiking somewhere – anywhere, really. Just get away from civilization for a bit. It’s too crazy out here.
Good luck with those aspirations — they’re excellent ones.
For 2022, I just might have to begin to see all signs of a nervous breakdown in myself and others as a form of positive disintegration instead. The theory of positive disintegration, first made popular in the 1960s by Polish psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski, suggests that extreme displays of stress, fatigue, & anxiety, all our present day twitchiness, might point the way towards individual psychological growth, if one only learns to interpret these responses anew and get help.
If social science itself fails me, there’s always Galway Kinnell’s “The Bear”*– a poem that could provide no better example of what it is to fall mad, & to somehow be born anew.
*Kinnell in 1973 reciting the poem from memory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-D7oJoqDi0) and the full poem (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42679/the-bear)