Working with purpose
Happy New Year to you.
On Monday night, I experienced a brief interlude of gratitude.
It wasn't the Christmas I had hoped, but I suspect hundreds of thousands echo the same sentiment.
My family appreciated and gave thanks to our health and sanity during the last year.
Christmas is over, and we are eight days into a new year. Yet, I don't feel satisfied. I don't feel I achieved much in the way of things in 2020.
December 22nd I downed my work tools, my brain finally had had enough, and it could do no more hence my writing hiatus.
What did I expect from 2020 what did I envision the year would give me?
I am not one to set goals or new year resolutions; I find them cumbersome and tedious.
You need Levitas when you approach a new year, and while I rested over the festive season, I felt out of sorts, lost in my own future.
What about 2021?
How will this year be different from the years gone before?
How do I want to make the most of the year?
The pandemic did not halt the clock, December beckoned us in relentlessly reminding us that Christmas and New Year will be upon us and that maybe things will be better tomorrow.
I spent most of last year trying to look forward to everyday things, from evening meals, reading, sketching new walks in the country, and Christmas was no exception.
I had hoped that Christmas would see me reunited with my parents, who were coming to spend Christmas week. Alas, our hopes were dashed when the Prime Minister effectively cancelled Christmas.
What was there left to look forward to?
I was comfortably numb drawn to champagne as a bee to its honey.
Anything to escape the malaise I had fallen into. All the little things had become something to look forward too.
Friday nights watching dramas on Netflix, Saturday mornings reading the newspaper and long brisk walks on Sunday with my husband.
And here we are in 2021, which feels, unlike any new year. Caught in limbo from one solitary year to the next without any plans for the future.
The pandemic rages across the UK, and we are staring into an abyss of never-ending lockdowns. Morale is low, and hope and motivation scarce.
A New Year starts with an intentional sense of self-purpose, fuelled by the omnipresent self-help books and social media reminders about how to manage our work-life balance.
None are in evidence this year!
The current situation offers no such breathing space for self-awareness.
What many are thinking is, how do I manufacture a few months or maybe a year of yet more resilience?
How do we find the sheer energy to be optimistic and carry on through the next few months.
How do we cope with another lockdown, freedoms curtailed, work confined to familiar cream coloured walls?
In the face of all that is seemingly awful, the last ten months are a testament to the human spirit's endurance.
And while the outlook is bleak, we find comfort in leaning on familiar objects to remind us that it is okay to feel disheartened.
Low spirits remind us of our human frailty, and the act of self-flagellation does more harm than good.
We are not indestructible and to err is to be human. Being compassionate to ourselves and one another is one resolution that should be part of human kindness this year.
2021 asks for more kindness and deliberation, compassion and empathy.
Believing that I have done something wrong because 2020 didn't quite go to plan will not absolve me of fear and worry facing 2021.
But through experience I know we will get through this, we will survive 2021 like we did last year. We will continue to push through taking a day at a time.
That is why planning and ardently trying to follow new year resolutions make no sense to me.
All I want for us all is to have a safe passage through the coming months and then reunite with family and loved ones.