I’ve been imagining re-situating this purpose - not so much re-positioning personal intentions but relatively privileging the first person singular.

I don’t mean simply increasing the instances of I/me/myself/mine cropping up in my decision-taking in 2007 as compared to 2006. I am being governed by a desire to continue developing and refreshing (through active, iterative review) how I balance more strictly personal concerns with keeping a regard for ‘other than self’ – the latter might extend to include ‘civic mindedness’, ‘duty’, ‘responsibility’, ‘service’ and so on.

I could be feeling the effects of exposure to anxiety about restrictions to my exercise of my rights of self-determination. In actual fact in 2006 as in most other years I did note (as opposed to taking any action to prevent) how I sometimes omitted to put ‘self’ in the frame whether in the act of working or being at home. You know how it can go – defer not demur, almost as an act of communion.

I can’t easily cite specific episodes when I have felt as if ‘my self’ has had to cool her heels in the cheaper seats (metaphorically speaking). It occurs to me though that one of the seeds of my pre-occupation is a prosaic one, to do with the fact of my professional, domestic and social lives co-habiting and intermingling; like an increasing number I am self-managing if not always self-determining in my work. It can be a crowded, precarious-feeling life, every day a Sunday or a Monday - or often both at the same time. A flux which in my experience can give rise to instrumentalisation and subordination of self or at the very least making it an easier option to be a bystander; as opposed to directing, ‘leading’ and animating outcomes.

My intention for 2007 therefore is to be quietly attentive of the baby whilst throwing out the bathwater. It can be all too easy these days to fetishise and prioritise submission of ego – and so forget to be direct in nourishing self. Unless the latter process becomes established however, there can be no cosmos, no firmament of twinkling constellations. So we need our stars to be well-provided - each of them - the better for them to be able to reach potential in their brief lives and round out their place in the human populace.

I hope you too construct moments in 2007 where your candle burns bright, true and with sustenance.

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