We’ve asked Karyn Schwartz, owner of the Sugarpill apothecary on E Pine, to contribute to CHS about health and Hill living on a semi-regular basis. If you’re an expert and want to share with the community in a recurring CHS column, we’d like to hear from you.
I tend not to celebrate holidays when you are supposed to celebrate them. I am particularly not fond of New Years, which has always seemed to me like such a random day to stay up later than I want, drink shitty champagne and make promises that I don’t even know if I can keep.
Resolutions are hard enough; making them on the same date as a billion other people, in a state of post-holiday exhaustion seems a little crazy. I am always so grateful for the grace period between January 1st and my Capricorn-cusp birthday to actually think about what I want for my own New Year, and to consider what the habits are — either in actual practice or in thoughts or belief — that I am ready to contend with.
During that time I watch a lot of other people be incredibly unkind to themselves. Eating (or not eating) plans that throw the body into shock, exercise regimes that tear up muscles before they are ready to stretch so far or strain that much, and promises to be different in thought, word and deed that are quickly thwarted by the familiar pressures of the everyday: The vows to change one’s entire life overnight are broken quickly, with remorse and self-hatred waiting in the wings.
What if the best way to change a habit is to intentionally observe yourself engaging in it for a time, rather than trying to stop or otherwise alter it “cold-turkey”? My brilliant homeopath once suggested to me that trying to quit things might be just another form of suppression – that instead of working to re-pattern the habits of the body or mind, the practice of quitting often reinforces those patterns by making you even more obsessed with the very thing you are trying to change. Instead he suggested, as so many of my smartest teachers have, that I essentially stalk, or closely observe myself engaging in these patterns, and to begin to notice when and why I am drawn to do or think or feel something that I really would rather NOT be doing, thinking or feeling. He promised that once I was able to see clearly and honestly what my own habits were, I would essentially become good and sick of them, and only then would new possibilities begin to arise.
What I wanted, more than this assignment, was for him to give me a magic sugarpill to make everything different in an eyeblink. But of course that’s not how it works. Looking in the mirror is a drag. Telling the truth is exhausting and will bring even the most righteous person to their knees. But something happens once you begin to practice in this way. You can no longer pretend that you are not in charge. You can no longer stand to do the things that make you feel sick, or allow you to hurt yourself or others. You begin to lose your taste for the things that don’t serve you. You find strength where you did not know you had it, and you begin to forgive yourself for the ways in which you’ve caused yourself harm by the mere act of realizing why you had gone to war with yourself in the first place. Letting go of the familiar is not easy, and stepping away from anything that is outright addictive can be overwhelming, and can feel impossible. But once you get really bored of your own habits you become excited at the thought of the unknown. You stop making impossible resolutions, and instead RE-SOLVE the problems that cause you to get in the way of your own peace and triumph.
