I have been writing this post in my head just about a thousand times, with only a smidgen of exaggeration ... And I realized that I better let it flow and stop overthinking it, so here it goes ...
For the last team meeting of the year, my boss asked us to come up with one accomplishment, our biggest for 2021. One. And you know what? I racked my brains for days to come up with one. Not because I’ve had so many, mind you, that I had trouble choosing, but just because I am afraid 2021 was one of those just ... OK years. I never believe that any year is forgettable. I’ve always believed that every year is good and bad and new and old and it’s all its own “thing”, just like people. You can’t just pick one person to be interesting - we all are for different reasons ... But in the “personal accomplishments” department, 2021 seems to be lacking. For me.
I personally don’t think of accomplishments per se, either ... I string them together in my head around milestone days (birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, year-ends) right alongside the losses and the not-so-glamorous events. But, I usually count the “new” and the “different”, the lessons in my years and this year, just like all the others, had those, as well. But again, if I were to compare it with other years of my past, it would not wow me. It would not stand out. And it would not beckon me to repeat it - although I never want to relive things, either, even when they are great ones. What is the point, when life has so much more new-ness in store for us that’s worth trying at least once?!
This year felt a little bit like this: 2020 was a bizarre, surreal, fiction-like year that brought about end-of-the-world-like fears in me, and everyone around me, family, friends, or complete strangers. There were true, palpable events that could literally have made “the whole sh*thouse go up in flames”. 2020 was one of those years (probably the first for me, in my 46 years of life) where my whole world, my frame of reference of the world, was completely blown up and exploded to smithereens. And I knew that the smithereens would never come back together just the way they were before, they were never to make the same exact whole, albeit cracked, as before 2020 struck midnight on January 1st. Last year we were all trying to regain our balance and to clear the ashes and smoke out of our eyes before we barely realized what the heck just happened to us - our lives, our routines, our understanding of the world was completely shattered ...
And then, after 366 days of that (it was also a leap year, remember?!), I told myself (and I am sure I had company, too): “All right, 2021. Be (dare I say?!) normal! Let’s figure out how to get back to before the Big Interruption of 2020, shall we?! 2021 came with the promise of new vaccines that would restore our freedom. We’ll then open up the world. We’ll get rid of the Dictator in Charge in the White House. The world will be freer, fresher, will hit Reset and start back up. Shakier, changed, a new kind of “new”, but start back up. We hope.” So, for 365 days (almost) of 2021, that’s what we did: we kinda waited for that “normal” to come back ... We waited. And hoped ... and we’re still waiting and hoping ... Or at least I am.
Truth is: 2021 did not end up being much different than 2020 ... Still another year of proving “unprecedented” to be a painful cliche ... Still a year of “not normal”, a year of fear, of waiting, of hatred, of haves and have-nots, of one day competing with the next in bad news and drama, no matter what news channel you follow ... Turns out that 2020 did not teach us much. Yet, anyway. We kinda wanted 2021 to reset us to our “old selves” but what it instead did, at least for me, is made me believe that there is no “old self” to go back to ... The scars and pain of 2020 morphed me, and us, into these new earthlings and will now have to find a new path, a new life, a new routine for whatever the future might bring to us ...
I am sure the generations that survived the wars could relate to this: they could never again be the people they were before the wars began ... They could only move on as the transformed people they became during the trauma and the tragedies they witnessed during those wars ... And so are we today.
The world has evolved (or really just changed) and our “war methods” might be different today than in the beginning of the 20th century but they are still wars - direct affronts to our systems of value, of integrity, of being ... Disruptions to a perceived and comfortable order that we had established for ourselves and called it our own ...
2021 was the Year of the Big Lesson, I would call it, or the Year of the Big Reset: the lesson was that there is no new normal to come back to, that the world has the power to disrupt, interrupt, even demolish, but it’s up to us (only) to rebuild, to rekindle, to reinvent ... And that, I did not do this year and because of that the year seems emptier than others ... I can only hope that it was a learned lesson and in the years to come I will soul-search deeper and find some answers and some new rules to this game we call life, and apply them and move my life along ...
John Lennon said that “life happens when you’re busy making other plans.” In 2021 I was not even busy making other plans. I was in this hurry-up-and-wait mode, waiting for something, some signal, some external change to reboot my world ... And it never came. I am not one to have enough patience to wait around much (I am kicking myself I waited even as much as I did, for two years now!) and I can tell you that I am full of doggedness for the next little bit to try to go after life and meet it halfway. No longer waiting, no longer watching to see what she’s up to today, and in the next week, and month, and year. Just go and try to meet her ... wherever life is ...
I hope I can sit here 365 days from today and report back and tell you that I do have at least one accomplishment I would be proud of for 2022, but I know life is tricky and she might still have a few curve balls to throw. All I can say is: I will try a lot harder to do everything in my power to not come empty-handed again in another year. I will try to make it count.
There are trips I want to take in this new world of travels, new books I have stacked up high to read, there are classes I want to take and speeches I want to give. There are blogs I want to write and even a book or two ... There are days and weeks I still want to spend with my family and my aging parents ... because if one thing is for sure, no one is getting younger ... There are antics I still have not seen from my brand new kitty (rescued and adopted during this so-called “empty” year of 2021 - so maybe she can be my biggest accomplishment?!), and many recipes I have not yet tried in my ever new and ever evolving and ever richer vegan world ... There is so much life, even when the world is doing everything in her power to evidence the contrary ... If there is will and hope, there will always be life ...
I hope your year’s been full and the next one will be fuller still ...
Be well, everyone!
