https://www.kevinmcgillivray.net/word/
The joy of the free-diver, the peace of the loon, the patience of the turtle, and a touch of the ingenuity and panache of the great sea explorers (a Jacques Cousteau or a Captain Nemo).
Tending my depths, plunging into seas uncharted, dipping into mysterious pools and emerging to share the treasures and tales I find there (and perhaps hiding a few treasure maps of my own).
It’s always been natural for me to dive in to curiosities and challenges. I feel a spark to explore and learn in a new direction and I’m soon in over my head with rapt focus.
In other areas (major decisions about life changes, choosing a direction among seemingly infinite options, embracing an exciting but scary possibility) I’ve tended to be a tip-toer, a delayer, inching tiny bit by tiny bit into the shallow end and not quite making it all the way into the deep.
This is the first time I’ve chosen a word for a year, but if I had chosen words in the previous decade, I might have chosen words like Knight, Monk, or Artificer. My 20s saw me setting off on a series of expeditions of self-discovery. I went on energetic quests, designed great castles, and learned valuable wisdom and skills from my adventures. I was guided by the hope of finding my personal “mission” and the belief that I had found it (several times).
Each time, I was surprised to find that the purpose I devoted myself to was meaningful and thrilling but somewhat fleeting. I learned that the energetic drive of “mission” wasn’t the final solution I expected it to be, and it didn’t always take me to the destination I expected. Often the single-minded quest for the mission led to imbalance and instability through the self-sabotage of over-commitment and burnout. In many cases, I created wonderful things with wonderful party members, but the seasons often led to disillusionment, burnout, and depletion, leaving me feeling more distant from myself and my idealized “mission” than before.
At the beginning of the first chapter of my fourth decade, I feel a reflective peace emerging, a self-assurance and wider awareness from the experiences of the last decade. I feel a tentative balance between the extremes of overwork and isolation. And I feel a draw toward both adventurous dives into new experiences and moments of calm and reflection on familiar shores.
As a kid, sea creatures and seascapes were a fascination, one that I didn’t fully embrace because I didn’t feel confident as a swimmer. In the Year of the Diver, I hope to reclaim this childhood treasure, embracing both my tendency to immerse deeply and to drift at my own pace, and developing a stronger awareness of when to pull back from the siren song of “mission” and when to take a deeper leap than I might normally brave. I hope to find “enjoyable usefulness” in creative dives in a way that both deepens my sense of peace and uncomfortably disorients me into “un-knowing.” And I hope to do so with a lively sense of style and conviviality shared with a crew of fellow seasoaked companions.
Enjoy un-knowing. To let go of the weight of mission; to embrace improvisation and the unknown.
In the past few years, I feel I’ve placed undue pressure on single “dives” or projects, expecting them to carry the weight of a “life purpose”. In the Year of the Diver, rather than heavy expectations and calcified opinions about where a direction might lead, I hope to develop a mindset of improvisation, enjoyable usefulness, and staying in the tension of not knowing.
Dip, dive, emerge. To organize in cycles of immersion and emergence. Mobilis in mobili.
I’ll continue the pattern of deep dives into new interests, and experiment to develop better awareness of which dives might only be a short dip, and which ones I might revisit to explore deeper than I may have previously. By thinking in terms of “dips and dives”, I’ll give each dive its own time and space, allowing it to capture my focus and evolve in its own direction, while keeping my awareness on the overall cycle of immersion and emergence, taking time after the dive to reflect and recompose myself. The approach of my expeditions is not plunder and extraction, but deepening the well and leaving the depths richer than I found them, not depleted. I hope this approach will lead to both more meaningful dives and a healthier, more sustainable overall cycle of creativity—a stance of intermittent continuing, freedom, flow, and peace.
Correspondence and crew. To join a party of kindred explorers; to participate in camaraderie around tales and treasures.