I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I never have. I think it is tiresome, and a setup for personal failure, to set goals purely because of the celebratory context of another year. I have always made mental notes to do better, to take better care of myself or my family, maybe start a new hobby and stick to it. But never a laundry list of unachievable items to check off.
This year is no different, minus the existence of a worldwide, life-altering pandemic that has shifted the Earth in so many ways. We are all weary, as we exit this exhausting year and buck up to enter the new one. I can’t imagine many people feeling like setting goals when so much of our daily life has changed and pulled the proverbial rug out from under our feet.
You see it everywhere: people tired, scared, angry and constantly worried. How does one even carry on and celebrate the dawn of another year, when so many are sick and dying? When “normal” is no longer a word used in our day-to-day vocabulary?
One day when …
We do so with hope. Maybe not actual goals, per se, as one would have pre-pandemic. But, with hope for a better year ahead. Hope for happier days. Hope for a continuance of recognizing the simple joys life brings us. Hope for humanity. Not easy when you watch the news and see how far apart humanity seems to be right now. But hope does exist.
I find hope in my children. They, too, are enduring this depressing time and suffering mentally because of it. But I still see hope in them as they speak of “one day when….”—a post-pandemic mantra they use. Most young people easily do so. Have hope. They are living through the same frightening worldwide event as we older people are, yet they can still find ways to manage. Their youth allows them that.
I find hope in my faith. Yes, my physical church is now online. And if I am being honest, I am taking part more actively than I ever have. I even switched our family from our comfortable home parish—one that I grew up in, was married in and my children grew up in—to another that focuses on helping the local homeless and serves its people with a focus of offering online masses. A church that interacts with its people.
It truly changed me. And my faith, albeit tested (especially through the severe anxiety I have endured my whole life), grows daily.
I find hope
I find hope in dreams. Maybe they aren’t big dreams, maybe they are too simplistic in nature, but they mimic my current choices in how I have scaled back all aspects of my personal life.
I still dream. I dream of writing my first book. I dream of finally reading sheet music while playing my piano—not just tunes by ear. I dream of allowing myself, my true self, to thrive as a creative soul, an artist, a content creator, someone who creates for a living and earns income that way. Yes, these are my dreams. My simple dreams.
I find hope in others’ hope. I watch the front-line workers stay strong and care for the sick, risking their lives and taking a new vaccine regardless of the potential risks, which they know offers the rest of us a glimmer of comfort and—yes, of course—hope.
I watch the science community muddle through trying to make thick heads grasp how serious our situation is, and how vital their research and work is to our survival and return to “the living” again. That gives me hope. I draw strength from others’ faith in God, and their hope for better beyond this chaos.
I find hope in the deconstruction of my own life. If there is one thing this pandemic has shown me, it is how unwilling I am to endure at the hands of others’ dislike of me. Of others’ judgment of me. Of their passive-aggressive expectations of me, most of which I was raised with.
I realize now that I will forever be viewed as the “black sheep,” the “troubled one” within my family, the unfiltered drama queen who doesn’t hold back. Yes, that is, in essence, who I come off as. But that is not who I am. And therapy is giving me hope that one day I will accept myself, and learn to love or like myself.
This year has forced in me a facing of truths, an angry resilience to living as I see fit and raising my children more authentically, while accepting the way I was raised and no longer using it as a crutch or a reason to allow others to step on me.
I have been slowly cutting toxic people out of our lives, especially on social media platforms. I realized so many of these people had daily access to watch me and my family grow, yet stay far enough back to never offer us support. They only replied to me when I reached out first, and it took this year for me to see how deeply that affected me, and how easily and quietly it hurt me.
Deconstructing my world as the world around me fell to pieces has opened my eyes to what matters, and made me see more clearly how much work will be involved in getting myself to a place of true happiness and peace. This is only the beginning.
Will we be better, as humanity?
I find hope in belief. Believing the glass is half full, always, and trying to focus on that. This too shall pass. This may be the most cliché phrase; however, it rings true. This pandemic shall pass. There is proof that they occur every century and have come and gone, so this one will also.
What matters most, aside from maintaining our health and the health of our loved ones, is, how we all come out the other side. Will we be better for it? As humans? As humanity? Can we set simple plans and goals for the coming year or years, and be happy with them? Will we have learned anything from all of this?
When the dust settles, and the particles are no longer a threat to us or those we love, will we fall back to old, resistant ways that didn’t serve us well? Or will we create new ways to exist and, more than exist, flourish? Thrive, even?
I find hope in those thoughts. I hope you do also. I wish the world a healthy, happy New Year. And many more to come. No resolutions required. Just hope. Simple hope.
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image 1 image by enriquelopezgarre from Pixabay 2 image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay 3 image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 4 image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay
