2024 Annual Review
I learned three lessons in 2024.
Christopher, my younger brother, visited us in October, and he said "I love these plants." We have a monstera and philodendrum in the living room, a money tree and anglonema in the library and a few fiddle figs and ivies spread throughout the house. If I use their names, I remember them more.
We watched them grow throughout the year. Monstera buds are amazing; they start as relatively innocuous stalks, some growth at the base of existing leaves. And then slowly, they grow up and out, then unfurl, and turn into new monstera leaves.
The Monstera plant needs sunlight and copious water, three drenchings a week. If the sun is particularly bright one week, brown patches form at the tips of their big green leaves. We spray water on the leaves, it helps. But if the plant doesn't get enough water, the entire leaf turns yellow. Then there is no saving the leaf.
This was the first 2024 lesson.
When the biggest monstera leaf is yellow, that leaf is dying. That leaf can't be saved. And yet for the sake of the plant and those new green buds, water anyway.
I didn't do any professional work in 2024. Part of me was grateful for that, I needed a year of rest. And maybe I too needed repotting. I'm grateful to be able to have the break.
Another part of me was expectant, anxious even. I would hope some opportunity would come crashing out of the ether, and land on my lap, and it would be wonderful. My career expectations and plans sometimes hung out there, just outside my conversations, unaddressed or worse, under-articulated.
As I leave 2024 behind, I am finding ways to be OK with the dying yellow leaf of my career. I'm watering anyway.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.
Annie Dillard
In 2024, I did the things I wanted in my life.
I got to: Show up for my seventh year of weekly therapy. Join a men's group, The Journeymen. Help out with The Small Bow and deepen my practice of meditation.
My book club, the SSDG, continues to be a source of great personal insight, and I've spent more time with the participants this year than everyone outside of my nuclear family. At the end of the year, I had a trial run of an experiment in reading and discussing a new work from the poet David Whyte, which I hope to continue in 2025. And this year, I started marriage counseling, to be more vulnerable and share more with my wife.
And then, there are other practices that I did for a bit in 2024, but for whatever reason, aren't part of my January 2025: engaging my "Board of Directors", yoga, running, weight lifting, calisthenics (mostly headstands), photography. Each of these waxed and then waned in their own ways.
But no matter what was specifically working or not, I was practicing something most days. And I experienced the year as a series of mostly good days, if I'm honest.
At the end of each week, I write a little summary. When I reviewed these summaries of 2024, the most striking thing is the appreciation of the unstructured time with kids. In the summer, I wrote:
I really enjoyed Juniper playing on the grass on an inflatable crocodile. She was just asking me to push her (she meant pull) and laughing and giggling.
Later:
We all got in the pool this afternoon. I drove everyone to boba. it was a nice lazy Sunday.
In fact, on Sundays I would take June to the farmer's market and then a playground. These are happy memories, they come up again and again.
And, through the passing of the year, I can see myself being more comfortable with my kids. This isn't a new thing, but it's certainly one that I feel more confident about. From April:
Watching the kids solo is no longer a dreaded activity and you find that everyone kind of likes it, including me.
We also had amazing experiences; I reported 'enjoying each other's company' feeling in exotic places, like Maui and Japan. But more often, at least according to the record of the year, I found it hanging out in June's bedroom, in our living room and playing ping pong in the backyard.
My second lesson this year has to do with this growing appreciation and understanding of family. Specifically, my aunt. She's 84 and has lived a full, independent, meaningful life, mostly alone, in San Francisco. In November, I moved her to an assisted living facility in Los Angeles.
I was very nervous about moving her. I told my therapist that, "Jeanne says that she doesn't want to go to the facility, she just wants to go home." And, Jane, my wise guide, said to me, "Of course, she said that, all old ladies just want to go home."
All old ladies just want to go home. The lesson isn't really about old ladies, it's about acknowledging the reality of the situation, and realizing what's beneath the words.
The Assisted Living arrangements aren't perfect, but it's the best place for Jeanne now. Jeanne needs care, and she can't do it herself. I'm learning that this end-of-life process isn't about me. I sit in the parking lot of the Assisted Living facility and dread going inside. But I open the car door, and walk inside.
In May, I found myself at a funny place called the Peace Awareness Labyrinth & Gardens in West Adams, Los Angeles. The drive took me through streets, crowded with overbuilt ranch homes, and the avenues, full of liquor stores, warehouses, weed dispensaries, and empty storefronts. The center's entrance was dominated by a fancy gate; it opened to a massive ornate Italianate villa. And in the back of the villa, in the center of a garden, there is a labyrinth.
The labyrinth was flat and smooth as a dance floor, with white stones for where to walk, dark stones for the 'boundaries.' I was given instructions: take my time and make my way meditatively through the looping path until I reached the center. And then walk, in reverse, out of it. There were no choices to make, just follow the winding path.
I first found this exercise silly--the destination was a few feet away, and how would it matter if I 'followed the path'. And yet, as I started, I had all these vivid feelings: illness, embarrassment, an intense feeling of wanting to get it over, the feeling of being on stage and being watched. A reluctance to proceed. And then a real certainty of purpose. And then some more self-consciousness. It took me around forty-five minutes to walk in and walk back out.
Afterwards, I recognized those feelings from jobs I've had, my athletic endeavors, my relationships with my parents, my marriage, and with my kids.
This is the third lesson from 2024, one I'm still learning: that the feelings from the journey often aren't a reflection of the circumstances. On this random Wednesday walk, I was having all these funny feelings in a funny maze behind an inordinately ornate mansion, in a funny LA neighborhood. And I've had all those feelings throughout my life. Later, I read:
The cause of happiness and the cause of suffering is not so much in life itself, but in the way that we relate to life.
Jack Kornfield
It's hubristic to write a recap of 2024 and to not acknowledge the election. It was momentous and, in some ways, anticlimactic. The results weren't what I had hoped they would be. There was lots written about it. It hangs out over the entire year, but I don't want to talk much about it. As my meditation teacher Christiane Wolff says, "thanks, not now."
My own 2024 was significant and ordinary. I'm taking away these big lessons: Yellow leaves die, water anyway. Old ladies just want to go home. And the cause of suffering is not in life, but our relation to it.
And then these small ones: visit with your brother, jump in the pool with your family, walk the maze, read the books, get out of the car, think the thoughts, say the things.
Happy new year.