To set intentions
is to prepare for what's already ahead
We have reached that annoying weeklong holiday elongation when our society wants us to continue eating, buying, celebrating — whatever it takes to perpetuate consumption — while considering the year’s best XZ and the year’s lost souls and the year’s new words but be sure to wear your silver spangles and practice the Auld Lang Syne and really exhaust yourself so you can return to work next week.
Amid all this noise and pandemonium we are also encouraged to set resolutions. These have always made me want to grind my heels into the earth’s bedrock. I’ve never been a fan of authority and when I am put in charge of setting my own limits and challenges, my brain goes haywire in a weird meta-rebellion situation. Resolve to save money and I’ll immediately order a pair of Sonos speakers.1 Resolve to eat healthier…fine but not until I down the rest of this chocolate cake.2 And I’m no Icarus-turned-phoenix, rising from the ashes of my own self-destruction. I’m an irreconcilable degenerate by January 2 every year.
But a few years back, a friend suggested “Intentions.” Semantics, okay, but it helped. She showed me how she and her family organize their intentions for the coming year into categories such as “health” and “finances” and “personal” and “family.” Under each category they write a handful, like 3-5, very specific marks they’d like to achieve in the coming 12 months. For example: pay off credit card debt, or lose 10 pounds, or hang out with friends once a month. Post the intentions somewhere you’ll see them all the time and then check in with your people (others with intentions) once a quarter or so.
This appealed to me, one, because lists are my engine, and two, because you have a whole year to do the thing? Sign me up. So with my friend’s assistance I made my first set of these back in December 2019 for the upcoming year. I’ll skip the covid disclaimers and say that neither 2020 nor 2021 went as I thought they would at the time of intention-ing, yet I still attained some of my goals. Part of the fun is looking back at sheets from previous years to see what has transpired over all that time!
My thinking about the world and my place in it has changed enough in 2023 that I’m about to upend this process and start with new categories. For example, “professional” or “career” used to be one of my headings. This feels like a close relative to “getting ahead” which is not a thing I care about these days.3 Instead, I want to care for other people and nonhuman relatives. I want to become a better human in the world. I want to enjoy all my days because who knows when I will travel to the stars?
At the field seminar in Yellowstone last week we were told to carry lights at night, lest we emerge from our cabin and trip over a buffalo. One evening I exited the bath house and had forgotten my lamp. The moon cast some of her light, so I stood a moment at the edge of darkness to allow my eyes to adjust to what I knew awaited. Slowly, the snowy path illuminated in front of me like a fairy road. The shapes of cabins ahead formed. The mountain ridges behind the camp sharpened their edges against the black, black sky and finally the stars blinked into existence. It had all been there all along; I just hadn’t been able to perceive it.
This year’s intention category headings are yet swirling in the morass of my thinkingbrain, but I imagine they will look much different from years past. I may find myself scrawling “Giving” and “Learning” and “Balance.” Some of the reading from my last couple of years4 as well as the people I’ve met have influenced this turning toward what I consider a more fulfilling existence. And since the launch of Chickadee Community Services, the nonprofit I have the pleasure of directing, as well as the language work I do with the tribes of Montana through my day job, I’ve felt a distinct sense of my own trajectory visioning into my mind. This trajectory, and the intentions that undergird it, have been there all along; I just hadn’t been able to perceive them.
I hope all of you have a wonderful transition from one year to the next and are able to celebrate, or eat, or buy, or set intentions, or just sit in wonder at this world we share.
Certainly I did not do this on Wednesday.
Half is left from Christmas! Am I supposed to let it rot?
Though to be sure I now have a comfortable life with salary which allows me quite a bit of privilege and latitude to make this choice. It hasn’t always been this way.
Here are a few titles I particularly enjoyed and which I feel have helped me think differently in the best imaginable ways: Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta; The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson; The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane; Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age by Katherine May.
I always look forward to reading your articles and today there was a double reward of seeing a half eaten chocolate cake. I made it from Thanksgiving to almost Xmas eve without sweets. Before you paint those cabinets get expert advice. Thank you for sharing your writing and a glimpse of your life.
Completely relate to your meta-rebellion instincts 😂 and I love the idea of headings that better reflect your values - and the idea of posting them somewhere through the year. And, yes! They were there all along - your images with stars recently are just so beautiful.