The bead practice
In August me and Mhairi celebrated the ten-year-anniversary of our bead movement. It made me long to revisit who I was back when we started, what my need with the practice was, and where I stand with it today. And I’ve had a growing desire to start to write about it again.
For those of you who haven’t heard about our bead practice: Back in 2014, me and Mhairi (whom I got to know in Los Angeles in 2012) bought beads that would equal the number of days that matched the life expectancy of our countries. Each day we move one bead from one jar to another, and as the days pass, we see the content rise in one jar while it’s decreasing in the other – hence highlighting the importance of living our lives intentionally each and every day. We started having weekly calls (we still have them), and we blogged about our experiences for three years. We both have been amazed by the relationship we have formed as friends because of this deep dive in life we continue to do together.
Before we started on August 1st 2014, we wrote our intentions for the project and shared them with each other. I still remember that we had coffee at Toast on 3rd street in LA when we talked about how we wanted to spend our lives.
In my effort of keeping myself to my intentions I printed my words and quotes I wanted to live by, cut them out and put them in my jar of beads for me to find when I needed a reminder. Some of the words are so deep in my jar that I won’t see them until I’m seventy. I can’t help but wonder how my senior self will reflect on the words I selected when I was in my thirties… This thought sparked my yearning of finding out what this decade has meant to me and what my intentions are moving forward. Am I living the life I wanted? Do I still have the same values? Am I keeping the promise I made to myself ten years ago? I shared both this with Mhairi and the words that I can reach at the top of my bead jar. One word that stuck out to her was Honesty. So, we decided to revisit our previous way of blogging, by picking a theme to contemplate for a month, and to write about weekly.
The reason I once put Honesty in my jar was that I wanted to stay true to what I wanted and who I wanted to be, so I wouldn’t go astray (again). How many times before we started the bead movement didn’t I reach a point where I realized that I had compromised my own needs in order in order receive love, acceptance or get work? In 2014 I decided I wanted to stay on my path.
In The (honest) truth of dishonesty Dan Ariely states, “Many people need controls around them to do the right things”.
And I can’t help but to think that our bead practice is exactly that control system for me, but most of all, I felt as I looked back on these ten years, that the writing about it was the highest form of control system. It kept me more accountable, maybe it’s because we decided to share it, or maybe it’s just the effect that writing on me – making me connect with my heart and soul, and align myself: mind, body and soul. I realized as I listened to Ariely’s book that I really wanted and needed to get back to writing about our bead practice.
So, did this practice keep me on track for these past ten years? Have my values changed? Do I look at Honesty the same way I did back then? Who was I when we started out and who am I today? Did we reach Zen as we thought? Stay tuned for our weekly writings to find out!
