One morning last Spring, I woke with a strange impulse to go to a dance class. I hadn’t been to a class for years, but the inner guidance was undeniably clear that I needed to go that morning.
My stellar husband was supportive even though the class was right in the middle of our kids’ morning chaos, and we both had busy work days. I left during a double meltdown.
Walking into class I felt a sob in my throat that didn’t leave until I got home. The joy was intense, full-bodied and a homecoming I didn’t know I needed. I realized my life had become so organized around responsibility, and devoted to centering other people’s creative health that I had stopped addressing my own.
There is a Greek word Meraki that means doing something with your whole soul.
There is no practical reason for me to dance anymore — it’s no longer my profession, and I’ve learned to get a more efficient workout. The only reason to dance is because it feels like Meraki.
We become a certain age and our enthusiasm gets de-prioritized — especially the kind that doesn’t make linear sense.
But living a creative life means risking enthusiasm, over and over, even when it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, it’s the door we’ve been looking for.
Invitation #10: Risk Enthusiasm
Risking enthusiasm takes daring vulnerability in a culture that teaches you to dim your light for the sake of fitting in. Its root comes from the Greek ‘entheos,’ meaning the divine spark within us. When we nurture our enthusiasm, we prioritize our original curiosity, desire, and integrity over what we’re supposed to think and want. Goosebumps, water in our eyes, or a tingle in our stomach are our bodies’ way of letting us know we are encountering that spark.
Because we’ve been so strongly conditioned to be productive above all else, we’re taught to think of enthusiasm as a detour or indulgence. But dancing again has helped my writing, my business, and parenting in ways that working harder at those things couldn’t.
When we trust creativity, what seems like a detour becomes a compass.
100 Ways to Measure a Year
Maybe you also grew up on the musical RENT and know every word to the Act 2 opener, Seasons of Love, a song about how we measure a year of our lives and how love is the metric that matters most.
In the midst of family and cooking this week, I opened up a page in my Notion app and challenged myself to make a list of 100 things from this year that felt like love, enthusiasm, and Meraki.
If you want to try this, make a list of what made your heart sing this year. Let your list be eclectic, far-reaching, and true. Release any pressure to explain what you write.
1. When did you experience Merikai?
2. When were you lit up? What gave you goosebumps?
3. When you look at your year, what feels like love?
The number doesn’t matter (I just like a challenge) and you can make your list any length. Hit reply and let me know if you try it!
In making this list, we reclaim our joy from a culture trying to keep us from it.
As you plan 2026, keep the list close. Consider how it might be a list of clues or a compass for your next era.
Thank you for all the ways you show up and for being who you are. Your presence matters a great deal to me, and I’m so glad you’re here.
What’s one thing that lit you up this year — in the midst of everything?
To your enthusiasm. To more Merikai in our next era. To measuring in love —
Love,
Liz
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My Annual Gratitude Ritual
Go through the 12 months of the year, and write down one person who lifted you up, impacted you, helped you, or was meaningful to you for each month.
You can think about… people who came into your life this year, people who resurfaced, people whose work inspired you (even if you don’t know them personally), people whose kindness moved you, people who held you through a tough time, people you’ve known forever…
Don’t overthink it and go with who comes to mind first when you think about that month.
The next step here is to express your gratitude – through a personal note, public share, supporting their work or otherwise – to each of those 12 people sometime before the end of the year. Feel the vulnerability of sharing gratitude and do it anyway. Because all of us have days when we need to be reminded that we matter, and we never know when someone needs to hear a kind word. No one ever gets mad about being genuinely thanked.
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Reading, Listening, Sharing:
Watching: Jennifer Lewis using her creative genius to share the We Ain’t Buying It Boycott (Instead, support small businesses and independent creators through TOMORROW and also FOREVER. If you are a creator or a business and would like the chance to be featured in this newsletter, please hit reply!)
Reading: Just finished Erin O. White’s Like Family and immediately started rereading because I loved it so much | Surrealism Against Facism by Naomi Klein | Thanks by W.S. Merwin
Action: 4 Ways to Acknowledge and Support Indigenous Voices
3 Quotes:
I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!
– AUDRE LORDE
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life…If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good…White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
— ROALD DAHL
I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.
— CAMERON AWKWARD RICH
