Each new year I like to take a little time to reflect upon the lessons of the past year. This year those reflections will have to come in parts as there is simply too much to digest at once.
I can’t begin to summarize the events of this year and I’m not even going to try. But here’s the first portion on what I expect to be a long process of unpacking…
The bad things were bad. There is no spin on them to make them pretty. People died this year, not only from disease but from violence, from oppression, and from personal suffering. We were simply inundated with bad news from the terrifying to almost absurd. The sudden shock of quarantines and shut downs forced us all to look in the mirror and at the world around us differently, and boy did we see some things.
Many of us, at some point or another, went into self-preservation mode.
Some of us decided that what the world needed was more positivity; if we could only manifest our compassion and kindness and health with green juice and affirmations, the suffering of the world would end. Suffering will not touch us, we said, because our positive energy will protect us. In our desire for a shroud of positivity, we denied the suffering of others or laid blame to victims. “That wouldn’t have happened if…” “He should have…” and none of that will happen to me because I know better.
Some of us went full denial to preserve our sense of stability… the world is acting crazy, but not us. It was easier for us to dismiss events and ideas that challenged us or made us afraid. If we don’t believe them, we don’t have to sit with the reality of them. We skirted the need to change and rolled our eyes at others. We found other deniers in chat rooms and social media when the news or popular opinion did not affirm our beliefs.
Some of us needed to act. When faced with fear, discomfort, and uncertainty we were activated to take a stand about something. We read our books & articles or watched our videos and we came out ready to fight in a way we had not before. For some of us our need to act came at the expense of the ability to listen and reflect and became, in time, about us. Our voices, movements, and demands made people pay attention to our cause but it also turned people away. Sometimes our voices were so loud we drowned out those who had been leading the movement for a long time. In some cases we found ourselves spreading false information that hurt not just others, but ourselves and our cause as well.
Some of us put our heads down and tried to block it all out. We made our world as small as possible and escaped into whatever outlets we could find: our family, our work (if we had it), our hobbies, and activities. Sometimes we wondered how we could help others, but then became overwhelmed, putting us straight into flight mode and running to safety.
However we reacted, at the very time when being in close proximity to other people could potentially make us sick we sought each other out.
We need each other.
We infect one another.
We infect one another with disease, with attitudes, with ideas, with hopes, with kindness, with compassion, and with fear.
We found our fellow manifesters/deniers/activists/etc. and we held on to them tightly. We reminded each other of what we believed and we looked to them to reinforce our beliefs. We sent out beacons with our language or clothing to signal those like us to join us. We quickly banded together, offering each other the feeling of inclusiveness and allowing our ideas to go unchallenged so that we would never have to feel the sting of being wrong or do the work of restructuring our beliefs.
As I have done all of these at one point or another, here are some things I am reflecting on; I imagine I will be reflecting on for quite some time:
-How I react to stress and fear… not the day to day kind, but the longer, sustained kind. How do those reactions help or hurt me? How do they help or hurt others?
-What is my gut reaction when I am challenged? Does it serve me?
-Who do I trust and why do I trust them?
-What is more important to me? Hearing the truth or hearing what affirms my beliefs? Which do I actively seek out?
-Do I value the differences between myself and others as much as I value similarities?
-In what settings am I willing to explore my beliefs? In what settings to I cling tighter to old ones?
-When I hope to share information or ideas with people who may not agree with me, do I create an environment where others feel safe to challenge their beliefs or am I turning them away?
-Do I show or tell my beliefs? How important are appearances to me? Can I recognize when I am signaling to others and when I am simply sharing my thoughts and feelings?
Perhaps I’ll come to some kind of conclusion about the lessons from 2020, but I am not sure there is one conclusion to draw from it all. I can only hope that upon honest reflection, I can steer myself a little more in the direction of who I want to be.
