“For just one second, look at your life. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else.
”

— Lev Grossman, The Magicians

Over the weekend, I pulled out my 2023 planner, my Next Right Thing guided journal, my poetry notebook and the Albums app in my phone and took the time to summarize, month by month, what happened in and to me over the last year.

Of course I had remembered the big stuff. The trips we'd taken, the accomplishments, the milestones. But I hadn't remembered that I'd planted flower seeds on Easter Sunday or that a child had the flu in November. I had forgotten that we'd done mini home projects in January that made us so much more at peace with our outdated kitchen. I hadn't counted the four college visits we made in 2023 or the amount of times I saw the ocean (5 times in 4 states).

These are the ordinary things that make up our very lives.

And they are worth reflecting on.

So today, I leave you with these January instructions: pull out the planners, the calendars, the photos in your phone or on your camera, the journals, and go month by month, making notes in bullet or sentence form about your life in 2023. It is an exercise in re-membering.

And it is in the re-membering that we are found.

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For just one second, look at your life. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else.

When I take time to reflect on the previous year, what themes begin to emerge about my life? What am I making them mean?

How might reflection create re-membering (ie the sense that I am put back together by the act of intention and attention)?

If I believe these words to be true, how then will I live today?