Contentment

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." - T.S. Eliot

Welcome to The Autumn Chronicles, a place to shine a light on all the wonder around us as we navigate the seasons. I hope these writings allow you to sit quietly with a cup of something warm and comforting and take a few moments for yourself away from the rush and hurry. If you would like to make sure you get all newsletters directly to your inbox, please subscribe below. Thank you for being here. All photos © The Autumn Chronicles.

Happy New Year! I hope the festive season was kind to you and 2025 has dawned exactly as you needed it to. It’s the time of year where we are surrounded by the inevitable clamour and noise of New Year’s Resolutions and how we can be better and do better in the next 365 days. I have to confess, I have never been a big one for resolutions. Coming up with an arbitrary list of things you would like to be better at, seemingly overnight, can feel more like setting yourself up to fail than setting out your intentions for the year. The first day of January will dawn much as the last day of December ended. Here in London, I could hear the wind whipping at the covers of the garden furniture against the steady thump of fireworks as 2024 took its final bow and January blew in with a storm.

I am all for intention setting as long as it is done with ease and grace, aligned with one’s values or hopes, rather than through persuasion, demand or the fear factor. My intention for 2025 is to live a life much more in line with my values by prioritising seasonality, good health and spending time with those closest to me. Over Christmas, my husband and I were both ill and we had to cancel plans with friends. I felt unmoored; I had worked so hard and such long hours in the final quarter of the year and my reward was to be time spent laughing and celebrating with my nearest and dearest. That time spent working, often without a proper break, allowing my stress to crescendo, of course made it far more likely that I would fall ill as soon as I stopped so my lesson for the next year is to pace myself, to make sure I have energy left in reserve and to make sure my own needs don’t get overlooked by the demands of other things.

According to the gorgeous book, Nature’s Calendar: The British Year in 72 Seasons:

Trees can drop parts of themselves they can’t sustain and grow new parts when necessary. Slowly, incrementally, they build themselves and bend themselves and bare themselves, year after year.

There is something magical about seeing the bare branches of trees, no less beautiful for their starkness, silhouetted against the pale light of a winter sky. The photo at the top of this letter was taken in Copenhagen on a freezing cold January day. I love the vivid crispness of the silhouettes in the brumal air and the gentle wash of the sunset above the horizon line, highlighting the figures of the walkers on the verge and making them seem at once sharp yet ethereal. My husband and I joke that, in the very unlikely event I ever record a country music album, it would be called Sunsets and Silhouettes as a tribute to my well documented love of the former and my slightly less well documented love of the latter.

This feeling of stripping back, of dropping parts of ourselves that are no longer useful or that don’t resonate with where we are in our lives, of allowing ourselves to gently evolve, change and grow without expectation or pressure, is something that I would like to bring into focus more in 2025. To align with that goal, my word for this year is contentment. While they may seem like two contradictory ideas, learning to let go of what no longer serves with grace and allowing myself the time and energy to enjoy what I have right now, without presumption or the feeling that I need to strive for more, is exactly the energy I need to carry me through 2025.

Much like the unadorned silhouette of a tree branch against a blanched winter sky, I want to take myself back to my raw form, allowing myself the time and grace to examine what I have in my life that truly makes me happy and then allowing those small buds to blossom as we leave winter for the renascent beauty of spring. I truly believe that this will help me to a live a life of contentment and joy rather than a life where I feel suffocated under the weight of expectation, both mine and other people’s. To be content is to be at peace. It does not mean that we have to forego aspiring to new and different things but it brings with it an acceptance of life in the present moment, of the positives and blessings around us and to allow ourselves to feel satisfied with what we have right now.

In the incomparable words of Socrates:

Contentment is natural wealth. Luxury is artificial poverty.

Sometimes, contentment is enough. Sometimes, it is all that is necessary.

I’d love to know: what is your word of the year for 2025?

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