Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic January always seems to make us think we need an intense planning session to focus on how we can improve our lives through a list of goals, resolutions and promised fresh starts. I can only imagine the range of thoughts floating across many of our minds, as we review the past year, one that was challenging for the global community, and with no signs of changing soon. But rather than envisioning clean slates and new intentions, what if we instead reframed this moment as a time to recognise our lives as a beautiful work in progress, an ongoing journey in which endings and beginnings can’t always be scheduled?Maybe it’s because last year was also personally difficult for me in ways I had not anticipated, but I’ve been trying to embrace an approach to life that allows both for more grace in accepting things beyond my control and more agency in how I can make a difference in life’s events. Before we all get too deep into planning for the new year, it might be worth taking a step back and revisiting the year we had, collectively and individually. Maybe we will find ways to approach this time of year that could make our lives feel not just manageable and somewhat in our control, but also still full of wonderful possibilities even amid difficulty.“Dusk in the Studio”, a 1975 painting by the Spanish realist Isabel Quintanilla, depicts a table covered with craft items. There is no figure in the painting, and we can’t see the object that was being worked on. But the surface is messy with signs of work, and tools have been left out, as if ready to be picked back up at any moment. Light comes in through three closed windows. From the viewer’s perspective, it is as though we ourselves could walk into the canvas and settle back at the table. What if we did something different and thought also about how we want to feel in the coming year? It might be transformativeI was drawn to this image because I think many people, regardless of the focus of their work, can relate to leaving a desk with tasks still to be completed. It is a very natural experience because no matter how much we might intend to finish a work in progress, we have all experienced times when its completion takes longer than anticipated. I think it’s a painting worth contemplating at the start of a new year because so many of us assume that we need to begin January with a clean slate, with all the projects or even problems of the previous year solved. But that’s not reality. I also really like that the subject matter is a craftsperson’s table. It makes me consider how all of us are creators, at least in the sense of trying to design and fashion our lives, continually in the process of creating a life that truly is never finished until our time here is done. It can be helpful to keep this longer perspective as we enter a new year, that our lives are a work in progress and it’s OK when things are not wrapped up in some arbitrary timeline that society creates. Things spill over into new days, new months, new years and even into new relationships. Very often when a new year comes around, we are still caught in the midst of things. Quintanilla’s painting reminds me to find beauty in the process. The Mexican-American contemporary artist Larry Madrigal has a wonderful way of painting about ordinary life and the gifts to be found in the mundane. “Descendants” is a 2022 painting that shows a young man in a navy sweatshirt standing outside in a playground. He is holding a crying infant in the crook of his bent left arm, and with his other hand he’s blowing bubbles into the air from a container of soapy water. In front of him a little girl reaches her hands up towards the bubbles. The first thing I noticed in this painting was that the man has his hands full. It made me think about how stressful life must often be for parents, especially with a newborn, but also that parents still make choices about how they juggle life’s demands. Whether we are caretakers or not, we all have multiple responsibilities in our lives, and many of us are beginning the new year already feeling stressed about how we might manage. Again, this is life. But Madrigal’s painting reminds us that while we may have worries and responsibilities, there will be moments of fun and joy too. It is an image of a man making a moment of delight for his children, and presumably for himself too. And it makes me think how normally when we start a new year, we are focused primarily, if not exclusively, on what we want to accomplish. What if we did something different and thought also about how we want to feel in the coming year? It might be transformative if we guided some of our choices and behaviours by considering our emotional life and wellbeing. If we want most to feel loved, what choices could we make towards being loving and inviting love back into our lives? If we want most to feel calm or energetic in the coming months regardless of all that life might throw at us, what practices could we take up to make feeling in these ways more of a possibility?In the 1991 painting “Between the Two my Heart is Balanced” by the contemporary British artist Lubaina Himid, two women are in a boat at sea. The water crests behind them as they journey together somewhere unknown to us, and perhaps even to them. It is inspired by a work of the same name by the 19th-century French artist James Tissot, which depicts a white British soldier seated in a boat between two white women in whose company he appears delighted and pleasurably torn for choice. In Himid’s painting there is no man on the boat. Instead between her two women is a colourful pile, which she says, according to the Tate website, are supposed to be maps. The woman on the left wears a black, peach and white patterned boubou dress with a black headscarf. She’s dropping little blue objects into the sea with one hand, and with the other she is selecting something from the pile of multicoloured items that sits between her and her travelling companion. The woman on the right is dressed in a bright red boubou and a magenta headscarf. She also has a couple of the small blue objects in her hands. I love the inclusion of maps in Himid’s work and how it appears that the women are either consulting them or tearing them apart. For Himid, this gesture can signify the women’s agency in choosing to chart their own course literally and figuratively. I was looking at this work and thinking about how each year our lives continue along the journeys we’re on with the people already in our lives, and yet we do get to say something about whom we choose to journey with. What if one way we began a new year was to consider afresh with whom we may want to continue journeying. How do we discern and decide on the people best suited to accompany us in this season of our lives? Who we travel with in our lives will affect the directions we take and the places (and people) we choose to explore or leave behind. As we enter a new year, I hope we can find a little balance between working towards the goals we have in mind and paying more attention to how we feel and with whom we walk. These are the gentle but intentional ways we help craft our own lives, leaving room for grace and surprise, and letting the necessary things that shape the contours of our lives take the time they take. Email Enuma at [email protected] out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
