The start of a new year always makes me think a lot about how we’re conditioned to think of success, growth, and being in control of our lives. Usually by this point, when the new year has already started, people are done with both reflecting on the year that passed and with setting intentions or putting plans and goals in place for the year to come. With these things out of the way, and with the expanse of (almost) 12 months lying ahead, there’s a kind of electric energy in the air – we’ve made sense of what’s happened, we’ve decided what we want to see happen in the future, but ultimately we’re staring out at the unknown.

I feel like moments like this are charged with both wonder and fear, and this is why I like to lean in harder by doing a small but meaningful ritual. It’s a simple one: I look back on the past year, month by month, and make a list of everything that occurred that was unexpected and unpredictable, no matter how big or small. If you did a reflection as the year was ending, some of these unexpected things likely came up for you then – especially major things like a pandemic! – but there are likely many smaller occurrences that you may not have considered. Also, the intent behind this ritual is quite different from a year-end review: I deliberately stay on the surface when I list the unexpected things, and I hold back from assigning them a higher meaning or making sense of their place in the greater scheme of things. I usually find that not digging too deep helps bring even more things to mind.

I’ve been doing this for several years and every single time, I’m amazed at just how long the list is by the end. When I finish, I still stay on the surface without dissecting the events – and it gets really tough when you see them all laid out. There’s usually a very strong urge to try to piece together these fragments of unpredictable things big and small: I want to see a pattern in them, see how one thing caused another, tie them up in neat little bows of “lessons”. I want to know the “why” behind some of them, especially the more challenging things – and I want to be convinced that I can know it, so I can predict and prevent them in the future. And all I do is sit with all of this, without trying to change it. I sit with it until I start to feel a sense of my smallness in the world – not in a shameful sense, but a cosmic sense.

I know that smallness is often not a comfortable feeling, but that’s exactly why I think it deserves more space in our lives. So many of us have had experiences that led us to equate smallness with shame, powerlessness, and not-enoughness. We try to protect ourselves from feeling like this again by battling against anything that reminds us of that smallness, and convincing ourselves that we’re in total control. This can work for a while, but chaos and unpredictability are a natural part of life on Earth, and they’ll always eventually burst our bubble. The less tolerance we have for the feeling of smallness in the face of the unknown, the more chaos will feel like a threat – and the more we’ll tend to spiral and lose our footing as we try to grasp at certainty and control. We’ve definitely seen this to be true in some people’s extreme reactions during COVID.

I don’t think this tendency will completely disappear – it’s a deeply human impulse, and I don’t think we need to fix it or get rid of it. At the same time, I think practicing sitting with that smallness, and feeling the tension between our power and our limitations, control and surrender, knowing and not knowing, can help keep us more grounded when shit gets real. It doesn’t have to be a state we battle against. The more we can hold these complexities, the more we can be with fear long enough to feel the wonder, curiosity, and anticipation that’s often mixed in with it.

I keep my list with me throughout the year and look back to it often – sometimes I even hang it up over my desk. I also look back at my “chaos lists” from previous years – and often see the way I perceived many of these occurrences at the time has shifted in unexpected ways. And I’ve obviously found a way to adapt to every single unexpected thing on those lists, because I’m still here. If you’re reading this, you’ve done the same. If you decide to do this ritual, may uncertainty remind you of your smallness and your resilience.