When I wrote, in a last letter, about slow business and the courage to create differently, I knew I was naming only one part of the process. A decision.
Far less is said about what comes after. Not the next steps, but the space in between. The time when nothing is yet moving outwardly, but everything is already shifting within. Slow business, for me, is not a strategy. It is a rhythm. My rhythm. And rhythm has its phases. Growth. Movement. And then withdrawal.
Hibernation.
You may find it strange to enter this phase at the very beginning of a project. But January, which has only just ended, was never a beginning for me. It was an ending. And February is only its continuation. Where I live, it is the second coldest month of the year. My inner calendar follows a different rhythm. An older one. One that did not emerge from systems, but from nature. Nature follows these rhythms without question. Growth has its time. Rest has its time. And none of it requires justification. And so I do not justify it, even to myself.
Sometimes I suspect that even my horse understands this. With his winter undercoat — in which he resembles a polar bear rather more than a horse — it is plain that he has entered his own form of hibernation, and that it serves him as more than mere protection from the cold. A wise part of nature. As though he knows that this is the time when it is enough simply to be. In the herd. In the paddock. In rhythm with the light.
The system pushes us in the opposite direction at this time of year. New resolutions. New versions of ourselves. A new pace. But for me, these months are a time in which I consciously refuse the notion that every period must be productive.
Some seasons have a different purpose. They are here so that we may rest, and survive, until we feel ready to continue. In my body, this is very plain. I have no energy for the chase. And I do not regard this as weakness. I simply understand it. My thoughts ripen without the need for immediate action. Plans are not yet asking to be realised. For now, they simply are.
Yes, we might also call this procrastination. And believe me, I have given that explanation due consideration. But first and foremost, it is hibernation. Evidently this word pleases me rather more. Active stillness. A state in which nothing is being pushed outward, because everything that matters is still forming beneath the surface. And I savour this state — with deep gratitude that I can. Even though I, too, must work. Function within the system. Do not picture my hibernation as being apart from the world. I have only chosen to be in accord with it differently.
I love my Fridays. My Fridays belong to this rhythm. I have chosen them, for now, as a day without performance. A day on which I write because I can. A day on which I am simply here. And I am deeply aware that to allow oneself a four-day working week in winter is no given. It is a privilege — one I hold in profound regard, here and now. It seems my project, too, is in this state. Not paused. Not waiting. But hibernating. Things are settling. And I trust this process. Perhaps we have forgotten that not every season is a season for growth. That there are periods whose purpose is not expansion, but protection. Protection of energy. Of our inner space. Of ourselves.
If, in these early months of the year, you find that you lack the strength to push yourself onwards — perhaps you are not falling behind. Perhaps you are simply moving in that older rhythm, the one that came before the calendar. Just as I am.
And that is all right.
With love,
Nicolette xx
read also my piece about slow business and courage