Word For the Present
Dear Bubbles,
Last year, “Tired of Resolutions” asked you about your word of the year. What word have you picked for 2025?
~Looking for Wordly Inspiration
Dear Looking for Wordly Inspiration:
I see what you did there: wordly, worldly. Love a clever play on words! Hey, if Shakespeare could make up words, so can we! Bravo!
Thank you (and everyone) for reading Dear Bubbles and for your follow-up question.
Indeed, my post in January 2024 revealed that I choose a word to embrace for an undefined set of time instead of making a New Year’s resolution on New Year’s Day. Becoming more mindful of my own values and interests led me to determine that “defining an empty new year’s resolution, one I wasn’t likely to attain anyhow, on a single arbitrary day [New Year’s Day—a human construct] was self-destructive. It’s not how I wanted to live my life.”
(To read the full take from last January, visit https://dearbubbles.com/2024/01/resolving-resolutions/.)
So I pivoted to adopting a single word, a concept or an idea I could change on any day of the year I wished. To be sure, the practice I follow is not so much a “word of the year” but rather a “word for the present.” After all, every day we wake up and every moment we breathe presents an opportunity for a fresh start. Why wait until January 1 to change things up?!?
The word I chose to embrace starting in mid-2023 and lasting throughout most of 2024 was “uketamo,” a Japanese philosophy that means “I humbly accept with an open heart.” Those of you who have been on my photography workshops have heard me say, “The plan is the plan until the plan changes and the plan changes often so plan on it.” That’s uketamo.
I had hoped a focus on this notion would help me grow as a human and artist beyond my perfectionism and allow me to find meaning in any situation that transpired. It was my way of recognizing that I wanted to face hardships with lightness and confidence and not frustration and disappointment (which is all too easy to succumb to). As I mentioned in my So Said the River memoir I released this summer, “The waves on the river life don’t stop….If we rise to the challenge as the waters rise, if we push off these shores seeking growth and meaning, we get more resilient at navigating through them.”
In this space, I continued to release labels of “good” and “bad” and see situations just as existing without assigning judgment. I tried to see mistakes and difficult times as opportunities for expanding acceptance of fear, uncertainty, and discomfort. When things didn’t go the way I planned—and there were many of those times in 2024!—I’d say to myself “uketamo!”
Without suggesting I have mastered “uketamo”—which I feel will be a lifelong practice for me—in early December 2024, I felt a shift towards a new word: yutori.
Like uketamo, yutori was a Japanese word I encountered while researching ikigai for this column a few years ago. It’s difficult to translate the concept into English. Jisho.org, a Japanese to English dictionary, suggests the definition of yutori as “space; elbowroom; leeway; room; reserve; margin; allowance; latitude; time (to spare).” Some people suggest it means “room in your mind.”
After reading more about it, I’ve interpreted it as a savoring of experiences, embracing a calmness and flexibility as we each continue to defines paths that bring us fulfillment. A mental state that allows us to feel freedom from distracting thoughts or worries (kind of like mushin, which translates into “no mind”), but with a greater mindfulness and dedication to giving more space to what’s most important in our lives. Making conscious decisions that foster a more balanced, less rushed, and more purposeful lifestyle.
If we want this into extend into a metaphorical photographic perspective, I could attempt to associate yutori as the space around the visual elements within a composition to allow the viewer to pause and then expand into the frame. I could also make an association for haiku’s! Yutori could be the “jump” or the punctuation break between two lines to allow for pause, breath, and contemplation. However you’d like to think of it, it relates to being more mindful about the world around you—and that, at least in my mind, includes being more deliberate and permissive in your creative self-expressions.
A combination of life events led me to thinking more about yutori—things like the release of my memoir this summer (which was much more intensely emotional than I had expected), noticing the frantic pace I sometimes follow jumping from one activity to another (there are so many fun things going on at once!), my analysis 0f 2024 during my annual Bored Meeting (a Board Meeting, of sorts, for me to review what’s working and what’s not in my business and how I’d like to proceed for the next year), and just general ongoing thoughts about how I wanted to better relate with and impact my community.
No doubt, last year was incredibly rewarding and fulfilling for so many reasons, in part because of my focus on uketamo. It really worked! I feel like I’m heading into 2025 with even more curiosity, courage, compassion, patience, and confidence than ever, things I’ve never felt under the past pressure of perfectionism, control, and expectations.
I’m simply giving “room in my mind” to expand that concept with yutori to help me savor life even more so. So room in your mind AND room in your heart. Hey! If we did a conceptual blend of these two words, we’d come up with a new one…like uketori or yutamo! I digress…
No matter what you call it or how you personally interpret it, you can bet for me it means making more time to make new pies, squealing longer over seeing bubbles, and sharing both with others. It also means facilitating more practical transitions in my life and photography like:
- Dedicating time when I wake up in the morning to reading interesting books and articles instead of doomscrolling on social media and news (both of which only seem to feed our brains a whole lotta unnecessary drama).
- Prioritizing rest, without guilt, when my body and brain need it. Yeah, I know, I know. You can sleep when you’re dead, but I’ve realized that sometimes saying “yes” leads me to rushing from activity to activity with little time to breathe in between. I’m not suggesting I’ll say yes to less things in the coming year (again, there are so many fun things going on!), only that I’ll give more space between them to avoid burnout. My goal is to work more effectively and efficiently, not excessively.
- Incorporating dedicated creative and thinking time into my daily work schedule to learn more about writing, dancing, painting, and composing music. My brain is happiest when I feed it new ideas and give the two marbles up there enough time and space to chew on them. I know from studying the creative process that deepening my brain’s pool of raw materials—new experiences, thoughts, interests, and perceptions—deepens my photographic expressions.
- Expanding my photography teachings beyond the field—new videos, online courses, books, and challenges—to help others learn about themselves and their art in different ways. I can’t give away all my secrets right now…but stay tuned!
- Reducing the amount of “water bugging” we do on my photography workshops, meaning we’ll spend more time exploring and connecting with one location rather than driving hours and miles to skim the surface of our connections at a bunch of different, disconnected locations.
- Adding more time to my workouts to include somatic yoga. Gosh, does that feel like a breath of fresh air for my body, brain, and soul.
- More time wandering and wondering outside. Literally more fresh air!
- Celebrating my 50th birthday in 2025 not as a single celebration on a single day but rather a string of experiences with family, friends, and my community that have meant the world to me.
- Leaving space for everything I don’t know yet.
Just learning more about how the concept of yutori (and its relationship with uketamo and ikigai) can positively influence my life and creative path already feels refreshing. I feel a combination of motivation and excitement blended with relaxation for what may (or may not) come.
We often hear “Life is short.” We’ve all been alive long enough to see all too many beautiful lives cut short at too young an age. But the ancient philosopher Seneca had a different perspective on this. He said “Life is long, if you know how to use it.”
How are you planning (or not!) to use your days and year ahead? Whether you’ve chosen a word of the year, a word for the present, a New Year’s Resolution, or absolutely nothing at all—no judgment here, find what works best for you!—I’d love to hear what you’ve come up with so please leave your thoughts in the comments!
As we turn the page on another year, I’m so grateful to all of you for filling my heart with meaningful adventures, workshops, photographs, haikus, books, hikes, interpretative dances, skiing, flowers, auroras, laughs, bubbles, pie, chocolates, hugs, and more in 2024. I look forward to savoring my time with you in the days ahead. Here’s to a 2025 is filled with the space, peace, and freshness of yutori–and whatever else you deem meaningful to you. Cheers to your big Life with a capital L!
Be well, be brave, be wild,
~Bubbles
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