I’ve spent January trying to notice things and mostly what I’ve been noticing is all sorts of dogs in all sorts of sweaters and an unrelenting kink on the left side of my neck. I’ve been noticing that my baristas have been especially attractive and that I tend to feel loneliest on Sundays. I’ve noticed that I’m uniquely on the outs with New York and that I miss the feeling of sun on my skin in the same way I miss having my lunches packed for me. I’ve noticed that my knees ache when I bend down and that I have a hard time sitting still, especially in my own company. I’ve noticed that everything has made me want to cry–happy things, sad things, and the minor inconvenience of being sent the wrong size of jeans. I’ve noticed how long this month has felt, how many times I’ve begun and how impatient I am to be older.
January can so often feel like launching ourselves into growth just so, by year’s end, we can look in the mirror and be sure that time has passed. Time continues to pass. We can all be more patient with it. The needle isn’t moved because we set our goals against some arbitrary future moment. Instead, according to an old Atlantic Archive, titled Frog and Toad and the Self, we should “learn to consider ourselves as individuals, empathizing with small, universal struggles and weighing the significance of our own actions while facing fears and dreams with honesty.” There is groundwork first to be laid, parts of ourselves to consider and subsequently tend to.
A 2018 Harvard Business Review article argues, rather bluntly, “To control your life, control what you pay attention to.” Perhaps, put more gently, growth springs from that to which we attend. I have always had the sense that resolutions—the ones we are generally inclined to make—conjure images of weeds bound from concrete. It’s a malnourished approach to becoming. We place bets on the unknown. And the seeds we plant in January stall, not because of any fault of our own, but because they are raised on a universally accepted, misguided notion of care and how it’s taken.
I saw a play the other evening in New York, and in its earliest minutes, the main character, a millennial woman named Jane, disclosed to her therapist a self-nomered “hospital fantasy.” In her vision, she is admitted to a hospital with nothing wrong, per-se. But she’s given a bed and she’s asked how she’s doing and people check in on her with earnest. It’s a vision of rest. A dream of being cared for, that, regardless of its details, I think we all have. And I think it’s because it’s only in these moments of profound care, we are allowed to just be.
I, for one, am taking care at the chef’s counter of one of New York’s many restaurants. I’ve found that these moments are equal parts being and becoming. And it’s as close as I’ve come lately to satiating that craving of having my lunches packed for me. I have spent much of January at these counter bars, watching the mesmerizing dance by and the care with which meals are made. It’s this care that nourishes me.
At Margot a few weeks ago, we spoke with Claire who was working on the line, removing pith from the skin of lemons with the back of a knife so they could be candied. We ate these lemons on top of brothy, salty beans as one in a few of the courses we ordered. At Wildair, John poured us Reisling to pair with the dessert we ordered, a caramel mille feuille, that went together perfectly, like cookies and milk. And at Foul Witch, a chef fanned charcoal stoves that slowly cooked filets of steak, hot as mid-August days. These moments provide evidence that the meals were sprung from care. And it’s these moments of care which I notice I increasingly require in the process of becoming.
Tears welled up in my eyes reading the frog and toad excerpt. This allowed me to reflect on the deep loneliness I feel, resentment for being on my own, isolated when the day of constant interactions, distractions, and filling the needs of other closes. When I shut my apartment door for the last time in the evening. Maybe I’m not lonely, just deeply craving the knowing that someone cares for me, or wants to know I’m ok, a selfish craving to be on someone else’s mind.
Next step is letting myself take the time to know what I want to plant, not for work, not for the restaurants, or the hypothetical opportunities I could conjure by responding to emails or editing late at night. It’s funny how I’d rather work than ponder my dreams long enough to allow myself to fully commit to them.
Thank you for providing this moment of reflection Sara