The past week I’ve been observing a lot. People getting stressed out with holidays, those sitting alone or beside a computer feeling unsafe to be around anyone. I saw people have tragedies occur or miracles occur. Then there is the rush of, “one week until 2020 is over!” As if in the flip of a switch this new year would suddenly change the current state of the world. The biggest thing I saw was, “2021 will be different, I mean it has to be better right?” Does it? I hope so. As the new year came and went, I saw a very similar thing happen to most everyone. They looked at the year in review and said some version of, “well, this year was really rough. But, here are all the things I appreciate.”
I recently started to watch the show “Lost.” Honestly, I thought it was a reality tv show. We started to watch and the first couple of shows, I started to dislike it. Then I realized these people got a similar reality to what we’re facing. And unforeseen plane crash left them on a deserted island. They realized help wasn’t coming so they had to get to know people and their strengths, find some guts to do scary things, and work together to survive. Along the way they all have to confront their demons. They also had to develop some new skills based on their current circumstance. We like them, went under lockdown. We had to spend more time on our own than ever before. I myself got to deal with a lot of demons I didn’t know I had. At first, I thought, I have been spending way too much time in my own head. Come to find out, all those things were things I needed to confront and work out.
The next thing I saw with observation was people once again finding appreciation for thing things and people they did have. With so little social contact and most people having a “bubble” of people they will see, we gained appreciation for those people. We had to shift they way we did things in order to thrive. We’ve had to make sacrifices and dig a little deeper than normal. We’ve had to do things that are very inconvenient but necessary. I found that people found new passions they didn’t know they had. With time to fill, people started new career paths, found new hobbies. I saw people find joy in basic things they were to busy to bother with before.
So many times we want all sorts of different things. We beg, plead, pray, and try to manifest them the best we know how. We take as much action as we can until we find its out of our control. The biggest thing I’ve seen is that people have found not what they necessarily wanted, but what they needed.
I have friends that got to learn their schedules as everything was cancelled and slow down. Families have gotten to spend time together instead of being constantly controlled by their calendar and activities. We’ve mostly found ways to work together as coworkers, families, and friends to provide any support we can. We learned to appreciate what we used to take for granted. We’ve learned to pivot when needed to make things work. We’ve learned to fight for things worth fighting for be it ourselves or something else.
2020 may have pulled the carpet out from under the entire world. We’ve had to work hard and make sacrifices to build something that will be a new way of doing things. We’ve had to work through being terrified and frustrated to find any sort of glow at the end of a long tunnel. But I saw so many people able to shift their perspective and choose to be grateful for what they had and any new opportunity that came their way. They chose to cherish the abundant family time.
Now that 2020 is officially over, what can we look forward to? What changes can we start to implement in this new year. Things only change when we take the action and make the changes in our day to day lives. Instead of a grand new year resolution, what small changes can you make in your routine that will stick? Something you’ll be proud of when you’ve made it to the end of 2021 and you’re still going.