It’s been awhile since I’ve written here, a little over a year to be exact. I didn’t really plan to let it go that long, but I think there was a lot about 2021 that we expected to go differently.

Though I am weary of the challenges we’re living with now and the world feels like mostly a shitshow, I did learn some things in 2021. I like to choose a word to focus on for the year and I chose “anchor”. At the end of 2020 I found myself feeling, more than anything, a sense of being untethered and unmoored. I just looked up the definition of “unmoored” and when applied to a person it says “insecure, confused, or lacking contact with reality”. I wasn’t clinically dissociating, but 2020 definitely threw a lot at us to digest didn’t it? So, I guess it’s a little bit true. I definitely felt disoriented.

Prior to 2020, I thought I had a decent sense of my own values and what I believed. I was involved in a lot of efforts that embodied those values – working for racial justice, greater economic equality, transparent and democratic (small-d) government, and trying to love my family and friends well. I have always been a bit of a spiritual seeker and pretty introspective. But 2020 was like living in a snow globe where everything got shaken up and swirled around, making it hard to see. I spent a lot of time questioning my own beliefs and actions, worried that I had not been doing enough or that I wasn’t humble enough or grateful enough for all the advantages I’ve had. I felt as though the challenges of 2020 moved me too easily to that state of insecurity, I felt too easily swept up by circumstance and the collective yelling of our polarized society.

For 2021, I wanted to figure out what essential values, beliefs, and support systems I truly depend on to feel steady in the face of muddiness and uncertainty. I wanted to identify my anchors. Anchors come in different shapes and sizes for different water depths and sea floors. A lot of the time, the anchor is just sitting in the boat with you, in a pile of rope in the corner, and you take it with you from place to place as you travel. Sometimes, though, when nature’s forces are too strong or you need to rest, you have to cast it way below the surface of the water where you can’t even see it. But you know it’s there, tethering you to a specific spot. When anchored, the boat still drifts in the wind and waves and exposes you to changing perspectives but the anchor is grounded and you remain connected to it. I wanted a better sense of what parts of myself and my life I can depend on, what touch points I want to be sure of, especially when I’m feeling thrown about.

It was a mostly successful effort, definitely still a work in progress, but I do feel sturdier now than I did a year ago and clearer about my core beliefs.

The most important thing I learned was through some in depth study of the Enneagram, which is a spiritual/psychological framework of ways people experience the world. It is a philosophy that has been around for hundreds of years and has been passed down over time. There are secular and religious interpretations, including some by Catholics, my favorite of which is Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. The core belief that Fr. Richard teaches and that is at the heart of Enneagram teaching is that every one of us is part of a divine creation and contain divinity within us. Our work in life is to be our truest, fullest selves because our truest fullest selves are beautiful and have gifts to offer the world. For this to be true, it has to be true of everyone.

I don’t have a lot of certainty about what “divine creation” means or even whether a higher power exists, but this philosophy overall makes sense to me and resonates in a deep way. I also don’t know how to make sense of the world without a belief that every person on this earth is equally important. It is not easy to live that belief in a world as polarized as the this one and I fail at it every single day – probably always will. But the best way for me to get better at truly believing that everyone has value is to get better about believing it about myself. I can’t – and shouldn’t – be trying to do anything to change others except reflect back to them the particular beauty they add to the world. I can only do that if I also continue to better understand my own.

One of the things I appreciate about identifying this is that I think I have always believed this, even as a child, but I didn’t know until now how critical it was for me to become clear about it, to recognize it as a foundational belief that can withstand turbulence. In that sense, it is an anchor that has always been on my boat and that makes it feel even more true.

The other anchors I identified are actions, not beliefs, but their function is anchoring. On the days I do these things I am a better person and more able to access the core belief described above. They are simple: writing, meditating, and walking.

I’ve been writing since I was six years old. I don’t do it enough, but I once had a life coach ask me how I would feel if I was told I could never write again. My eyes immediately filled with tears and I felt a sense of panic that I recall viscerally right now just thinking about it. I realized it is an essential part of me and I do well to honor that.

I started meditating almost 20 years ago, during a serious bout of depression. For over a decade I did it sporadically and usually for about eight minutes. Now, I do it more days than I don’t and I sit for 20 minutes. Until December 29th, I had not put this on my list of anchors, but the holidays were a little challenging this year and I reacted in ways that left me feeling thrown about – untethered. On the 30th, I sat down to meditate and realized I’d not done it in a couple weeks, much longer than I usually lapse. The importance of a regular, silent effort to quiet my mind and open my heart became immensely clear to me.

Walking is something I appreciate a little bit begrudgingly. I would much prefer to run, but my back has other ideas. However, a few years ago I had a thought that has since become a thing I say to myself whenever I’d rather sit on the couch and look at my phone: you have never regretted going for a walk. It’s true. I have never taken a walk and not come back slightly more grounded, a little lighter, and glad that I went. There is, of course, a perpetual risk that I could take a walk and get run over or bitten by a rabid animal and I suppose I’ll have to adjust the mantra if that happens, but nothing comes without risk, right?

I was a little surprised that people didn’t really make my list. I think at the beginning of the year, I thought that maybe a few of the people in my life would surface as being anchors. That seems like something you’re supposed to say, right? I am extraordinarily lucky to have many mutually supportive relationships and I try not to take that for granted. Even though I didn’t exactly realize it, I think the whole point was that I needed to figure out the things that belong just to me, the things that allow me to show up to those relationships and the wider community feeling grounded and able to engage without toppling over.

I feel good about it, more than any of the words I’ve chosen in past years, which I mostly forgot.
Did you choose a word for 2021? How did it go for you? I’d love to hear.