A Year, More and Less

Most every morning, I read one passage from Daily Doses of Wisdom. Yesterday, I read passage 351 of 365 and thought about how we mark years.

Someone I used to know scoffed at celebrating birthdays. "Why celebrate an orbit around the sun?" As if we need reasons for celebrations.

More and more, I'll take any excuse to celebrate.

In a couple weeks, I'll read passage 365, my New Year's Eve of Wisdom. My Daily Dose year, begun May 13, 2022 on passage 1, will end after a bit more than 365 days.

A year can be anything I choose. 365 days, 365 Daily Doses of Wisdom, or even some other number of something else. Whatever I choose for it to be, it's reason to celebrate.

The thing about finishing an orbit of the sun is that the orbit continues, another year begins. Around June 1, I'll return to Daily Dose #1 just as we return to January 1 each new year. That passage like every first of January will be new and familiar, both at the same time.

If nothing else, that freshness combined with comfortable familiarity is worthy of celebration.

Wherever you are, whenever you're reading this, I say, Happy New Year. Let's pop some champagne, share a warm embrace, and sing in the new beginnings as we continue our path around a star that keeps us warm and lights the way through an otherwise cold and dark universe.

Sore Knees and Anxiety

My knees felt stiff and sore coming downstairs this morning. Nothing major, but enough to have me holding the handrail, taking it slow. I'm not getting any younger. I accept that. Besides, I knew what to do. While the coffee water boiled, I did knee lifts and squats to loosen things. It worked. I felt better. Still do.

Also this morning, Ive been feeling tightness across my chest as I hold my breath and spin up about tasks and expectations I have today. Doing my knee lifts and squats, I worried there wasn't time for all that and I had to get going. Where I needed to go wasn't clear. I just felt anxiety about it.

I made coffee, moved to the couch, settled in to write Morning Pages, my mind wandering toward anxiety. The voice in my head demanded all sorts of things I should have been doing. Anxiety darkened the weather in my mind, all clouds and no sun with a threat of impending storms.

Loosening my knees is easy. Stretch and move. If that doesn't work, rest and ice. But what can relieve this anxiety? I place a hand on my chest and take deep breaths. One and two and three and four. Again.

This loosens things some, but the anxiety creeps back. My knees only get looser as the day goes on and I forget about them. Forgetting anxiety, I forget to breathe and accept, and then here comes the anxiety.

I just took a big breath and went back to typing but noticed I was holding my breath and felt the tension. Turns out I haven't figured out how to work with this anxiety, which is why I'm talking to you, whoever you are, guessing it's better to share this than carry it all on my own.

The weight of the anxiety, after all, is enough to really wreck my knees.

Better. Faster?

Went for a slow run this morning. Barefoot. As I often run. I got thinking of another barefoot runner in town. An acquaintance. Someone I'd like to know better. A much faster runner. But they hate to run and so don't run much.

This was two miles into a run I was loving. Felt like I could have run ten miles. Slowly. I felt joyous. Bare feet padding pavement. Moving steadily down the road.

Later in the run, another runner came off Peck Hill onto Tecumseh and passed me. They asked how long I'd run barefoot. Almost fifteen years. They said they only do it on grass fields. Everyone says that. I joked that I do it because I'm a broken down old man. They laughed and ran ahead. Steadily pulling away. Another faster runner.

Again I imagined being faster. Thinking it would make the run better. I envisioned keeping up with that faster runner. Going faster than the other barefoot guy. Doing a 5K in fewer than twenty-five minutes. Faster is better. Common sense on which I get stuck.

Even when I'm in the midst of a perfect run. When I feel completely happy. Unlike the faster guy who hates every step. Faster is better? Maybe better is better. Speed might have nothing to do with it. If walking feels good, that's fast enough. If I'm happy crawling, that's fast enough.

Boom. Insight. Enlightenment. I kept running down Tecumseh, hung a right on Old Lyme, and left onto Standish. Each step joyous. Complete. Better.

An hour ago, I got thinking about how to crack that twenty-five minute 5K.

Enlightenment, it turns out, can be fleeting.

Universal Concepts of Expansion

I got stuck this morning on a bit of philosophy and science. The universe is expanding and thus bounded rather than infinite. I struggle with the question of into what the universe might be expanding. If nothing lies outside the universe, how can it expand? Where is it going? What is it replacing?

Then in the shower, where insights come, I thought of numbers which go on infinitely. I thought of children topping one another: I bet infinity dollars followed by I bet infinity times infinity dollars, and so on. No number lies outside math. Even the square root of negative-one is inside. There is no outside of math. It's inconceivable.

I still wonder how the universe, a physical space, can expand without going into something else, but I can conceive of math doing it, so maybe someday I'll understand more about the universe.

Even if I can't quite conceive of the universe's expandsion, I can, through the example of numbers, accept it and believe someday I might come to understand.

In this way, my thinking expands. Not into something that it replaces. It just expands.

The universe began from an infintesimally small point, the beginning of the big bang. I began from a very small thing, beginning a much smaller bang. Now here I am, expanding continually and still somehow inside myself.