A Sense of Ease

My word/motto for 2024

Jan 20, 2024

Greetings from warm, tropical, Westchester, N.Y.

Kidding. Ally and I just returned from a week hanging out in the Caribbean, specifically the beautiful little island of Antigua, pictured above. I might write about the week in a future post. But for now, I want to share with you my word, or motto, for 2024. The Antiguan lifestyle — laid back doesn’t quite do it justice — has reminded me of the charm in slowing down.

What’s your word for 2024? Instead of a resolution, folks have gone with a word or motto. One of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, chose the word “less” for 2023 — less commitment, less stuff, less busyness. “Less” is a noble, powerful thing in an age of more, more, more.

This year, my word(s) is “at ease.” A sense of ease, to be precise. It’s partly inspired by a

Jeff Goins

essay on The Year of “Enough,” in which he writes of how he’s learned to “step away from our cultural obsession with activity and become more comfortable with not keeping up.”

Similarly, “at ease” isn’t about coasting or laziness; it’s about being calm, relaxed, and comfortable — out of your own damn way. Do you also feel that many of the most enjoyable periods of life arrive when we’re at ease, and not tense, anxious, stressed, over-thinking, or pressing?

The same likely goes for musicians on stage, broadway stars, and people like Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who, moments before landing a plane on the Hudson River, told his co-pilot: “What a view of the Hudson today.” It’s hard to envision him landing the plane in any state other than at ease.

Ease into situations, let go by loosening the grip we hold on life, and “lighten up,” as Pema Chödrön writes:

Maybe the most important teaching is to lighten up and relax. It’s such a huge help in working with our crazy mixed-up minds to remember that what we’re doing is unlocking a softness that is in us and letting it spread. We’re letting it blur the sharp corners of self-criticism and complaint….We all need to be reminded and encouraged to relax with whatever arises and bring whatever we encounter to the path.
―Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Four or five years ago, in need of writing advice, I turned to a wonderful editor, Jon Scher, formerly of ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and The Athletic. I expected some sort of new strategy or improvement plan, but he said only two words: “Just relax.”

That resonated. Relax when writing, relax when cooking, relax when driving, relax while walking. Just friggin’ relax in a world of busy, fast, tense. How to relax? For me, the phrase must be top of mind, and it includes physical ease: shoulders dropped, jaw unclenched, gaze eased.

This is the same idea as being “at ease” or “lightening up,” because to just be at ease is a beautiful thing — to not be rushing to the next train, or the next traffic light, or the next promotion…but to just simply be, something my therapist will sometimes say to me.

Here’s more from Goins:

A lifetime of endless striving turns out to be not much of a life at all. It is, instead, a cycle of constant consumption, guilt, and self-neglect — a series of sprints without end, checklists that are never complete, and a body which yearns for the full rest it never receives.
And then, you die (probably sooner than you thought).
So much of my life has been marked by a fear that who I am is not enough. That I am fundamentally flawed. There is, I have thought for some time, something wrong with me. And if only I could fix that thing, then I just might be okay. This sense of incompleteness has haunted me my whole life, driven me and served as the bedrock of so many decisions. It has caused me to push harder and demand more from myself than necessary. And for decades, people thanked me for the punishment I inflicted on myself. Congratulated me for doing so.

Much of that is relatable, especially his thoughts around “endless striving” and “incompleteness,” and the never-enough nature some of us tend to carry with us everywhere we go. I realize much of the anxiety I’ve experienced comes from beliefs around “incompleteness” and “flawed.” They’re all lies we tell ourselves: I’ll be complete when I have X dollars. I’ll be fulfilled when I have that kind of lifestyle. I’ll be content when everything comes together in my career.

Of course, not only is being “at ease” a wonderful way to go about your life, but it also makes you much more enjoyable to be around.

Goins concludes:

All I know is I’m done. Done with striving, done with pushing myself so hard that I’ll never be able to catch up to my own expectations. And as I attempt to slow down the pace of my own life, I start to notice how much clearer everything feels. How beautiful it all is. It turns out that I don’t need as much as I thought. More is not necessary when what I have is enough. A warm bed, good meal, hug from my kids, and a wife greeting me at the end of a long day—these are little luxuries I try to not take for granted.

I’m done with all the striving, expectations, and incomplete checklists, too.

A few other things on my mind:

In a story about a person’s life with ALS, one quote struck me: “He was unfailingly optimistic about people’s potential, which is just a great way to live your life.”
A beautiful part of a beautiful poem: “And if it's true we are alone, we are alone together, the way blades of grass are alone, but exist as a field.” — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Final words from essayist Maria Popova: “It is only from such a place of gratefulness that we can perform beautiful acts — from a place of absolute, ravishing appreciation for the sheer wonder of being alive at all, each of us an improbable and temporary triumph over the staggering odds of nonbeing and nothingness inking the ledger of spacetime.”

Celebrate your gifts,

Matthew