Embracing the light and the dark in 2024
And how I'm practicing practical dreaming amidst self-doubt and suffering
Contemplations
How are you moving through the unknown in 2024?
As you begin the new year, instead of joy-washing them away in your goals and resolutions, how can you honor all of your feelings and the nuances of your intentions?
How can you navigate self-doubt in this moment and beyond and continue to believe in yourself again and again?
***
Last year was one of the most challenging years of my life. The fall was a season filled with personal and collective grief, rage and confusion. As the leaves turned, so did my heartbreak — over and over again. I took a break from writing, from social media, from my non-profit Joyful Liberation Collective and cleared the space in my life, my consciousness, and my heart to move through the tidal wave of emotions that arose during this time.
And yet the holidays were, for the lack of a better word, “normal” — in the best way. As someone who often seeks novelty and is a bit of a (small) adventure junkie, I found that the routine, the ritual was surprisingly comforting, healing, and nourishing during a time of tumultuous suffering. That comfort reminded me why I started this Substack.
As someone who obsesses over titles (you can ask any former colleague of mine), “Everyday Magic” came easily to me. As I have continued to write, I have wondered if I should change the name of this Substack: Maybe it should be more specific? Prescriptive? Should it have the word “mindfulness” in it? Maybe it should be ‘Not to be all Buddhist About It’ instead.
But as I sat at my sister’s kitchen table, hearing my parents softly snoring through a football game on the couch and watching my nephews cry from laughter as their Cô Bimmy (that’s me, Cô means Aunt in Vietnamese) lost big time at Machi Koro, I remembered why these moments of joy, of light, of laughter, are at times the stakes that root us into the ground when perhaps the rest of you is being blown away in a storm. That seeing, that insight is what I mean when I talk about “Everyday Magic”.
It is a gift for me, that I wish to share, with you so you can also see the magic in your everyday, your every moment.
That even in our darkest moments, we have the ability to see and feel the light — that it is the deeper understanding that it is always there. I believe this is what Thầy (Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh) is talking about in his teaching of understanding that there can be no lotus without the mud:
“The art of happiness is also the art of suffering well.
Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be an excellent teacher…if you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time.”
(Or as country singer Pat Green sings, “Sometimes I sleep with all the lights on / It helps me to appreciate the night.”)
This is why I practice mindfulness, this is why I am a Buddhist — to help me slow down, to zoom out, to help me cultivate a life where I am not fast-forwarding through, on auto-pilot, where I am not living.
And so as I move into 2024 (still processing that), I have been reflecting on this past year like so many of us. 2023 was a year of dreaming for me, of transition, of collision, of integration, of much suffering. After getting laid off earlier this year from a full-time job I didn’t want to begin with, I buckled down and focused on my writing and teaching. It is often hard for me to see how much I did this year because it didn’t express itself in typical milestones that we celebrate in a capitalist society (i.e. raises, promotions, more money).
I have gone through much effort to build a life very outside the norms — one which prioritizes my care, my spirit. On the tough days, I wonder if I have made my life harder than it needs to be, going against the gravity of the world. But most days, I am proud of what I am cultivating, even if I feel stuck by what our American society values and rewards.
“Welcome to the other side,” my wife, the lifelong artist, said from both a place of knowing and grief. She has spent her whole career making experimental theatre for kids, projects that wow at cocktail parties but hardly ever pay the bills.
And so here I am, looking 2024 straight down the barrel, holding multiple truths that conflate and conflict: I know my path is rooted in service, spirituality and storytelling. But how does one make a living as an aspiring Bodhisattva (someone who dedicates their life to relieving the suffering of all living beings) in 2024 in America? And how do I continue to navigate the self-doubt, the suffering that comes from that and more? How do I continue to honor all of my feelings instead of joy-washing them away, just because it’s a new year?
For me, 2024 will be a practice of balancing faith and equanimity. In other words, of practical dreaming. This year will be one where I will continue to believe in the impossible: That I can make a life out of writing and teaching, of being of service; and one in which I will take my know-how from my past lives and put this plan into action. It doesn’t mean I won’t find creative or familiar ways to keep paying the bills, it just means me continuing to have faith that another way is possible. To believe in a way. To believe in myself. Again and again.
My wife and I were invited to a low-key NYE party that one of our local small business owners hosted in her shop on Main Street. It was 30-ish people, a smoke machine and some homemade cocktails in mason jars. My wife and I danced the night away, until we were invited to write down something we wanted to let go of, moving into 2024. I wrote: I’m letting go of self-doubt and embracing I’m a badass motherfucker!
A little before midnight, we all went into the middle of our small town’s empty Main Street. I watched as our friends, our community, lit these paper lanterns and let them float away into the night sky. Even amidst the hazy darkness, you could still see the light of the paper lanterns far into the ether, until they became one with the clouds that surrounded them. As an icy rain started to sprinkle on me, Jess and our new friends, I couldn’t help but think again about the warmth and cold, the light and the dark — and everything in between.
Not to be all Buddhist about it, but…
there is a painting next to my altar I got from Bhutan years ago. It is acrylic on a hand-woven canvas, painted by a small shop owner who I became friends with after we bonded over our love of Celine Dion.
I look at this painting often after my morning meditation, seeing these monks walk into nothingness — or emptiness. I see their assuredness, their steady pace, as they go, willingly into the unknown.
On the other side of my alter is a beautiful orchid that a dear friend gave as a gift to me and as an offering to Avalokiteśvara (the Bodhisattva of compassion). Its pinkish-purple veins are ever-so intricate and wise. In many ways, they are each other’s polar opposites — one is rooted, one is floating. But I also see how they are the same: Both are reaching, searching beyond themselves while being grounded in the same dirt and water that make up who they are. They both know the light will come, and that the darkness is also needed.
This is one the many ways we can dwell in non-duality; understanding the presence of two ideas — and the dependencies, the interconnectedness of the two. The lotus and the mud.
As Thầy says, “Without suffering, there's no happiness. So we shouldn't discriminate against the mud. We have to learn how to embrace and cradle our own suffering and the suffering of the world, with a lot of tenderness.”
So for me, 2024 will be a year of holding, maybe even embracing the non-dualities of my life, of being in both the mud and the lotus. This will include but will not be limited to:
Living an anti-capitalist life in a capitalist world;
Finding financial sustainable ways for me to live and work as a writer and mindfulness teacher in a world that does not value those things;
Still having faith in the possibility of this path, even on days where it feels impossible;
Growing in the darkness;
Knowing that light is always present;
Understanding that form is emptiness and that emptiness is form.
***
Contemplations
How are you moving through the unknown in 2024?
As you begin the new year, instead of joy-washing them away in your goals and resolutions, how can you honor all of your feelings and the nuances of your intentions?
How can you navigate self-doubt in this moment and beyond and continue to believe in yourself again and again?
Dear friends, thank you so much for reading! One of my goals for 2024 is to increase my subscribers here on Substack. If you got something out of this post, here are ways you can support:
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I love the images — from you and Jess dancing through the fog machine to the smoke of released wishes and icy rain. You are everyday magic. 🪄
Thank you for writing this Kim! You are always so timely and wise! I feel as though I am not alone