The Lightness of Being

Happy new year earthlings!!

It’s that time of year when everything must be NEW, a reset if you will. New – resolutions, beginnings, routines, mindsets, diets, fitness regimes and goals. An opportunity to make a fresh start, to shake oneself out of comfort zone and recognise that things have to be done differently if one wants different outcomes. I think this is amazing and believe it to be true. Hand on heart, I do. And God, I have insane respect for everyone who does this because God knows I struggle. I guess that’s why I finally felt compelled enough to put pen to paper and write.

I am, what one could refer to, as a collector of memories. The kind of memories that entail holding on to beautiful used wrapping paper from your 16th birthday and envelopes of old birthday cards. I will have you know that I DID get rid of them when I got married and was clearing out stuff before leaving for the U.K. (I may or may not have been threatened with bodily harm by my very mother, who does that?!) Lesser mortals might be more inclined to call me a hoarder. Well, tomayto-tomaahto, you know what I’m saying. 

Decluttering therefore, is a very difficult time for me and I expect everyone to respect my privacy as I process the pain of letting go. I also expect applause and loud congratulatory messages when said decluttering takes place. I have, over the years, become better at it; in part because I have found multiple versions of cellotape, staplers, scissors, Christmas cards, paracetmols, WD-40 and floor mops in different places and different times but never when I actually needed them; in other part because it is the polar opposite of my husband’s operating system and ensuing discussions do not necessarily spark joy as Marie Kondo would like shall we say; but in the main because of the sheer overwhelm of owning so much stuff that you need to find space to stuff it to make place for the stuff you wouldn’t have needed if you had had lesser stuff in the first place. The struggle is real, trust me. 

This, may or may not be the point where you start asking existential questions like when was Euclidian geometry developed, can spaceships be fuelled by horse dung or can I pretend to look fully awake while being fully asleep. All I will say is stay with me, there is light, I promise. 

And I mean that both literally and figuratively. We declutter to let go of that which doesn’t serve us, to create an openness, but where do we find the space to put away the mental baggage that we carry? It seems to me that these cabin bags never make their way into the hold. When we travel on a plane, in a train or on a bus, for a few hours, we take our heavy bags off our shoulders and from our hands, giving our tired, almost numbed fingers a shake before placing these bags in an area where we neither have to touch nor see them for a period of time. Have you noticed how that involuntary sigh of relief escapes your lips when you place the bags on the weighing scales and belt? How your shoulders just drop down in gratitude and the tension literally starts to evaporate as you watch your bags teeter and squeak, making their way, out of your sight? How you feel eleventy billion kilos lighter? 

See this is the thing about baggage – even if you offload them, you are never really rid of the weight unless you ensure you have no access to them (remember what happens on car journeys – you will ALWAYS need something from one of the bags in the boot simply because it’s there). Human beings have found a remarkable way of staying heavy always. The burden of our thoughts, people’s expectations, judgement from even the ones we love so dearly, our guilt, our debilitating fears, our never-ending lists of things to do including physical decluttering of our homes and spaces – we carry all of this and then some, in our hand baggage on our backs. We wear them like a badge of honour, never pausing to check them in, even momentarily. It weighs us down, makes us take everything including ourselves, far too seriously and is serial killer of joy, for the bag bearer and those around them. I don’t need to be an expert on this subject to tell you that this is all profoundly damaging on so many levels. But you already know that. As do I.

So here is what I plan to do in 2026 (I’ve long since realized the futility of resolutions), if I can manage to stay committed and consistent. I plan to check-in my mental baggage for a few minutes every day – for me, this could mean reading a few pages of a book, taking time to write a few lines, listening to music not as an accompaniment to my day but as an aide for doing the things I love, making time to actually listen to my daughter rather than say, ‘sweetheart, just give me 2 minutes so I can send out this message?’, going for a short walk (if of course the rain gods decide to let up), showing up at the gym even briefly to start with or just breathing mindfully. For you, this might look entirely different. All I know is that we must somehow learn to have a lightness of being, even it’s in the little moments of our day; find the ability to lighten up and in so doing, be able to think and act freely without encumbrance, to flourish and fully live the life we are meant to live. So check in those bags and take a seat. That is my wish for you, for us all. As for me, who knows, 2026 might be the year I actually start throwing out excess baggage from my home because my mind doesn’t hold any.

P.S. It takes a special kind of tenacity to ask nicely, then ask again, then remind one that they’ve been asked and chase with asking nicely again to get someone who loves words to put pen to paper again. My heartfelt gratitude to you for the push S, it means more than you can imagine.