Shifting through the seasons of 2023

Here's a fun question for you.

What would life be without seasons?

Would you celebrate the endless warmth of summer and the bliss of never having to crawl out of your bed in the biting cold?

Would you miss the stillness of soft rains or the magical fall of autumn leaves under the mellow twilight sky?

Maybe you'll join me dancing in the outdoors, throwing away hayfever tablets because finally, oh finally those pollinating spring flowers ain't got nothing on you.

But let's really think about it...would living in a season-less life be all that amazing? I guess there's a beauty to seasons, a beauty in living through constant transition, in continual ebb and flow, where there's never just a permanence to being.

If there's one thing I'll take away from 2023, it's that life is a series of seasons and you can't always be in the reaping/harvesting stage of life.

What works in one season may not work in the next and perhaps one of the greatest journeys we'll take is in learning how to accept these natural, seasonal rhythms of change in our life. Everything has its own time and purpose. Just as there are different seasons in nature, be it spring, summer, autumn or winter, there are different seasons in our lives for joy, heartbreak, growth and rest.

Now isn't that a deep thought for you. I know you're probably asking who gave her that glass of Shiraz to drink while writing this.

When I think back to the days of 2023, I see it through a mosaic of colours, through emotional vignettes and most poignantly, through different seasons of change. 2023. It's the year I'll remember for the warmth of new beginnings, the cold reality of grief, the gentle stillness of being idle and the fragrant delights of travelling abroad. It's the year my shorts decided to spontaneously rip clean right down the middle during vacation, where 'Barbenheimer' and 'Past Lives' made me an awe-stricken, banshee-cackling, sobbing mess and the year I became unexplainably transfixed by spanish hot chocolate, pistachio icecream and battle ropes.

It's a year where I disrespected by body clock and sacrificed sleep to finish off the "Sea of Tranquility", "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" and the "Daughter of the Moon Goodness" in one week. It's the year I stood my ground through the hunger games auction frenzy - little me in the sea of eager buyers to finally land myself the keys to my first property. 2023, the year I gave mountain biking a go only to accidentally go down the 'Advanced' instead of 'Kid-friendly beginner' track (dear bike park, I'm sorry for screaming colourful words down a 2 metre ramp drop). 2023 being the year I made my best investment in...yes that's right, banana shoe deodorisers (trust me, they work wonders!) and the year when I suddenly let the waterworks flow and cried in front of not one, not two but five fiercely protective, incredibly maternal aunties for whom love equals the intense smothering of a said homesick woman in blankets, back rubs and bowls of unannounced cut fruit.

My Four Seasons of 2023

So, what seasons coloured my year? Let's call them Reconnection, Discovery, Dormancy and Spontaneity.

Season For Reconnection

11 years. More than a decade. That's how long it's been since the last time I saw the rest of family from Vietnam and Canada. It's a miracle when I relive the beginning of 2023 and recall the joint effort of bringing our geographically displaced Canadian, Australian and Vietnamese family all in one place.

You can imagine the absolute chaos that ensued at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport when a pack of boisterous Vietnamese yelled "Look! Look! They're here! Where's the camera, where's the taxi? Anyone hungry?"

I spent a month revisiting my parent's Vietnam hometown in Ca Mau, paying respects to my grandmother and grandfather and making up for lost time with my extended family. All those family dinners, seated on the floor around two massive whirling fans on a sticky humid night, squatting flies between mouthfuls of homecooked meals and lovingly, if not agressively so, placing food in each other's bowls. I cherish those moments deeply.

Throughout the trip, I couldn't help but remember the fine wrinkles etched across my uncle's forehead or the soft wavering voice of my fifth aunt, ushering us to eat more. It all reminded me too painfully of the fragility and temperance of life, that in this moment - being there in person to see my family meant everything to me. I left Vietnam feeling a bittersweet joy - on one hand sad to leave, but on the other hand, grateful to have been able to cultivate closer, richer relationships with my relatives and a sense rekindled connection. You can say I realised, in the sappiest way, that even though an ocean separates us, we're abroad but not apart.

Season For Discovery

It must be a tick. Or a bug. Or some kind of undiscovered cognitive contagion because for whatever reason, 2023 was the year I found myself trying more hobbies and experiments than I could count on my fingers.

From fencing, mountain biking, playing squash, exploring pickleball, smashing rackets in tennis, capsizing in a kayak, throwing frisbees, to realigning my two left feet with dance and trying to not fall off the Pilates reformer - I think it's fair to say at least I gave it a go.

I felt like an unsupervised kid in a candy store - wanting to give my attention and time towards one fascinating niche and then the next.

Was it an overkill? Maybe, but I certainly don't regret anything. I got to learn so much, had the chance to visualise other paths in life - realise I indeed, could film vlogs, create podcasts or become an ultramarathon runner and that it wasn't just some far out of reach dream.

So thank you to the season of discovery, for letting me test the waters, for teaching me how to prioritise what I value and to never be discourage to try again no matter how many times I fail.

Season For Dormancy

It's okay to not thrive. It's okay to allow things to be what it is. I wish someone could remind my younger self this more often. Struggle and hardship, it's part of being human. Whether it was dealing with the memory of a lost loved one, navigating an idle, slower pace of work, coming down from a motivation slump, taking days off from training or reserving Sundays as an exclusive 'Me Day', 2023 allowed me to better understand my energy. My energy isn’t supposed to be maintained at the same level all day, all month, all year and that to feel no momentum is natural.

It made me think, by letting ourselves not thrive, isn't that actually?what thriving is? Can you say thriving isn’t about living our best lives but rather about embracing our?full?selves, including the parts that are just barely coping, barely trudging along?

I wonder if meeting ourselves in the trudging is thriving. If getting lost and unsure of the path we walk is thriving. If letting the tears fall is thriving. If letting the grief out is thriving. I wonder if thriving means accepting that our humanity exists. Always.

Doesn't that make you more grateful for the battles you fight? It certainly made me.

Season For Spontaneity

What do you get when you cross 2 am Youtube street food vlogs and a restless imaginative soul? *Cue travel montage*

2023 is the year that I'm grateful to, for all the eye-opening, cultural learnings and adventures I was lucky to experience. Jumping across 3 countries - from the bustling roads of Ho Chi Minh City, to the golden morning skies of Seoul and then to the restless streets of Manila and serene calm of Bohol island.

I think spontaneity often gets confused as being frivolous and impulsive but in a world where it's easy to get obsessed with linearity, productivity and routine - sometimes we forget to make room for just experimenting, going with the flow and fulfilling human curiosity. In the past, whenever I have the thought of doing such things, I have a million excuses as to why I CAN’T do it. I think of things like work, money, commitments...so I'm thankful that I took the leap and got to travel with family and friends. Seeing who I am in a foreign environment has been truly a great test and learning experience and I've gotten to broaden my thinking by living in different places beyond my own country.

As one friend put it to me, sometimes you just have to sail off and trust the process, you don't always know where you land but I bet the journey there will be memorable, good or bad, at least you got to be there and enrich your perspective.

Now that's a wrap! I hope for 2024, no matter what season of life you find yourself in that you can learn to embrace it like the fallings of a first snow. Perhaps with some excitement or some trepidation or even with intrepid glee. But carry in your heart and mind a gentle knowing that the snow never lasts forever and that it will melt and with that, a new season will arrive.