How to get through 2021
Maybe not so far from the tribulations of 2020…
We all know and experienced the wonderful 2020. A year filled with uncertainties and wonder. It was mind-boggling the amount of things that happened from Coranavirus to the President of the United States suggesting to inject disinfectant to get rid of the virus.
It was a year of ridicule, pain, loss, working from home, ZOOM calls and the ardent search for a vaccine. The world was cast asunder and displaced.
It went against everything we were taught. Obligatory mask-wearing and social distancing became a norm. Brought families together and tore some apart. The travel industry as we know it came to a standstill and still trying to recover.
Some good news as we step into the new year is the long-awaited vaccine is here, numbers in many countries are in check and continues to fall.
However what is the modus operandi of making the best of 2021. What are the lessons we learned in the past year that we can use to reflect the present. Here’s my take, a simple one that is:
Love and gratitude
At the core of traversing last year was love. Be it the compassion and selflessness shown by medical professionals everywhere to masked volunteers ferrying groceries to homes of old people who cannot venture out.
Governments the world over choosing health of people as the paramount importance in contrast to the collapsing of economies.
“Kindness is the ability to know
what the right thing to do is
and having the courage to do it.”
~RAKtivist
As we gathered pessimism from events happening around us we were pushed to look at all the good things with gratitude no matter how minuscule it may be. We showed kindness to ourselves and to those around us.
We were all stringed together in collective humanity and did not let the virus beats us. We succeeded in some area and not others. Full scale victory is still far from our reach but we are progressing albeit slowly towards it.
No matter what happened and will happen, if we go back to love and gratitude I reckon we will be fine. Always.
Love, sometimes a dim light, will guide us by shining the path out of darkness.
Keep calm and carry on
I cannot find another phrase to best capture the possible response to our predicaments.
If you need to go on the balcony and scream your heart out, please do so. Let off some steam. After that come back quickly and go back to centre. Take a deep breath.
Despite what we went through, being calm and moving on brought us into this year with trepidation nevertheless. There’s a small celebration with a pat on our back that we survived one of the darkest year known to mankind in the modern age.
If we would have been edgy and rebellious the world would not have been so kind to us. We resisted the urge to defy the course of nature. We stayed cool in moments of total chaos and hopelessness. For these we were rewarded an opportunity to look deep inside each of us and find strengths (and weaknesses) and take part in a battle that we won by being calm.
“The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat.” ~Jules Renard
Being calm and quiet takes greatest courage of all.
This in my opinion was the biggest win of 2020.
The path ahead may be perilous. Don’t take heed as you let love, gratitude and calmness to guide you forward into a future filled with bright light, deep laughter and the new normal.
