Started January 2021
I love a recent emailed article from my past therapist. She believes that a new year does not suddenly mean that everything will be better. Allow me to elaborate and share my interpretation.
It is great to have a reason to celebrate and to have reasons for setting goals and resolutions. It is also very easy to blame a (calendar) year on all the bad events that happened to occur within that 12-month period. But a calendar has been contrived by humans- it really serves no purpose other than a means for keeping track of the passing of days and connecting moments with dates. Although we recycled or trashed our 2020 calendars (or refuse to look at them on our digital interfaces), opened a new 2021 calendar, flipped to a new page, celebrated the new digits that we put after the month and day, not much else has really changed. One year is not a self-contained entity, entirely distinct and separate from the year prior or the year yet to come. They blend and merge into the general passage of time, and everything that happened in that year's time remains with us. As our memories, the shared and individual history- it is all "there" to be acknowledged and utilized in order to make the future better and brighter.
So in February 2021, what is still true and relevant, i.e., pretty much everything from 2020. There is still COVID-19 (and a new strain) and people are still getting sick and dying from it. Masks still help to prevent the spread. It is still in the best practice for every community member to limit travel, errands, face time with friends and extended family. The former president is still in the news in unfavorable light. Systemic racism still needs to be dismantled. (Just to name a few.) The shit show is still on folks!
This isn't pessimism- it is realism. Though it may sound negative, it is not meant to be so. It is a more refreshing way to look at the world in which we live. As we note the day of the week or the specific date, find ways to live in the now. (If it helps to imagine a mini-you residing in the corresponding calendar box, go right ahead.) Embrace the daily challenges as exciting learning opportunities in which to do new things instead of lamenting in the undesirable differences.
Take the shift in exercise that many of us have experienced, for example. My therapist misses in-person yoga "like a fury," and I would much rather be on the floating floor at the Burn gym instead of sweating by myself on an unforgiving carpet-burn-giving floor at home. But we both embrace the less hectic days of running from one place to the next. And less driving (less gasoline consumption) aligns with my green values, which eases my conscious while also helping the world. Are you grateful for the reduced number of color-coded activities on your Google calendar? Can you embrace the spaces of quiet and nothingness in-between?
As my therapist pointed out, finding things for which to be grateful is always good and even better now when we allow ourselves to recognize that last year truly has not stopped being present. By embracing the moments as they come, there is a good chance that this year will feel positively different from last year, even if all we really have done is change the year's last digit-zero- to a one.
