Being a Human Who Plays Elf
Last week, a woman who lives across the island from me dropped off turtle candies and peanut butter balls at my house for no reason.
No. That’s wrong.
She did it because she wanted to spread a bit of cheer, a bit of kindness.
All she wrote about it on social media was “it’s fun playing elf.”
This women is a brilliant, strong woman who occasionally sends me via Facebook the kind of memes and texts that my mom would if my mom were still here. She runs a business. She’s a grandmother. She’s a realtor. She’s a human who plays elf.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching (gasp!) this last month, focusing on who it is that I want to be every single day.
Why just a day? It’s easy. A day seems a bit more manageable than a lifetime or even a year.
This morning, an email from the Daily Stoic came to my inbox where it read,
“When James Clear (Atomic Habits) was on the Daily Stoic podcast recently, he said he thought people were too focused on goals when it came to the New Year. Instead, he said we should ask ourselves what new identity we want for ourselves this year and what are the habits, behaviors, and routines we could change.”
I did a little gasp as I read it. The gasp shocked poor Pogie the Dog because she is a very high-strung canine. Her focus today is not about being less high-strung, but about how to get the cookie on the counter.
That’s possibly a better focus than mine. I mean, it’s doable.
The Daily Stoic quotes Clear as saying,
“It doesn't matter if it's two minutes, or if it's 20 minutes, or an hour, but I'm going to try to find a way to show up today as that person. Then, every action you take, even if it’s a small one, becomes a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”
The Daily Stoic is a site and a brand that creates a lot of content (free and paid) about stoicism. It does a lovely job of taking complicated thought and simplifying it.
What Clear is saying is that change and growth is typically made up of some giant movie-worthy leap forward. In real-life change usually comes from smaller steps and deliberate choices.
We are, Aristotle says, what we repeatedly do.
That lovely woman who lives across the island is lovely and kind because she made a choice to do something kind. She does it repeatedly via messages, via candy drop-offs, via listening to people when they need her.
She calls it playing elf.
I call it being human—the good kind.
Make beautiful choices and you become beautiful, Epictetus said.
“‘Well-being,’ Zeno said, ‘is realized in small steps, but is truly no small thing,’” that Daily Stoic email wrote this morning. “It’s why the Stoics were all about habits and routines—why Marcus Aurelius made sure to wake up early, why Seneca was always going on long walks, why Epictetus encouraged his students to write down their thoughts each day and reflect upon them at night. It wasn’t just about knowing what the right thing was, it was about doing it daily.
“The Stoics understood that it was only by changing our actions that we could change who we are.”
I want to be a bit more like that woman across the island. Today, I want to to be a kind person, a creative person, someone who inspires and exists in positive ways. It sounds a little silly for my New England self to write that down.
My nana would have said that each day what we should focus on is staying warm, making money, and living within our means. My avózinha would have told me that each day is about having fun, making something beautiful, and eating something delicious.
My mom would have been like the woman across the island: playing elf, being human, in big and little ways.
Make beautiful choices today if you want. I’m going to try to. I hope you will, too!
Here are all the buttons . . . It would be awesome if you left a comment or subscribed or shared, but NO PRESSURE! <3