Month: January 2023

I said my focus for the year would be on endurance. While it’s a theme that has been moving to the center of my consciousness for a long time, I credit Jennifer Pharr Davis for pointing my gaze to Endurance specifically.

I just finished her book The Pursuit of Endurance. It’s great. It has tons of wisdom on what it means to endure. But it is SO MUCH MORE.

I read a lot. The authors that reel me in most are those who show a deep contemplation of how to live a meaningful life. Pharr Davis is clearly that kind of writer, that kind of thinker.

But lots of writers do that…

So yes, she has compiled some wonderful stories about endurance. But these aren’t stories about enduring passively the shit life deals us. Her stories are about finding, indeed choosing, the tough paths we find meaningful, choosing the paths that are true to ourselves on a deep level. Then they’re about enduring the struggles that come with choosing our own path.

If you know me or follow me, you know I’ve come to love hiking. Unlike Pharr Davis, my love is for some pretty tame day hiking. I share none of the ambition for overcoming significant feats or the time at which they are completed. Yet.

But she said something I felt to be viscerally true, which I had learned as I grew to love hiking:

“There is something very powerful and very healing about physical forward motion.”

When in doubt, when in struggle, it is empowering to stand and put one foot in front of the other. Because that is often all we can do, and that physical act reminds our physiology that we can.

So the other thing she said that profoundly resonated with me is: “Hiking is not escapism. Hiking is realism.”

I’m a big fan of realism, of truth seeking. Hiking is a great metaphor for life’s struggles, so I believe her.

Her books, her story, are about finding ourselves. They are about an intentional exploration into our deepest selves. About asking ourselves the most pertinent questions we long to answer. Her writing is about the journey of finding our exquisitely unique parts. And about how part of the answers are found reflected in the complexity of others’ responses to us, as they are on their own journeys

What Pharr Davis does that sets her writing apart is celebrate individuality alongside love of community and a shared greater good. She values understanding and tolerance and finding common ground, and consciously doing so where those things are hardest to find. She doesn’t call it this but I do…

She espouses love.

I recommend her writing highly, and this book in particular.

(Every year I post the books I’ve read that year. I thought I’d start saying something about the ones I really love. I’m not a reviewer, but I’ll always share about books I love.)

Every year I set an intention, and every year I write about it here. Recent years were, in order, the year of the hike (‘20), the year of the book (‘21), and the year of the home (‘22). Well, 2022 turned out to be at least as much about the book (still to come), but the home has a new furnace and a/c (!), but still needs a lot of attention. Also, I hiked a bunch and became more regular in my yoga practice.

So, as I looked forward to the new year, I thought I just needed to do more of all those things.  For the first time in years, no single area of focus compelled me. 

But then I looked over my list of books I read this year, which I also post here annually (see below).  Seeing a book I read by Jennifer Pharr Davis, Becoming Odyssa, reminded me of her book still on my “to read” list:  The Pursuit of Endurance. 

Endurance.

It’s a thing I have only come to prize in this stage in life.  I’ve known for years I needed to stop expecting life to be free to struggle and heartache.  I’ve wasted a lot of energy panicking over things I could have just set about managing.

So for 2023, I shall focus on endurance.  Endurance for my book and other writing, my home, my hiking and yoga practice – endurance for my life itself.  I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but it won’t be a marathon. Maybe I’ll be able to hang onto my sweaty foot long enough to stay in dancer pose for a literal hot minute. We shall see.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year and plenty of endurance throughout 2023.

Books I read in 2022: