2020 has been such a hard year for so many, and even as I type those words, those words seem redundant. They seem hardly worth writing. They’re so obvious. See, the temptation is to leave the words alone — not to continue to shed light on them — because people are exhausted by their exhaustion.
Yet it’s more complex than that.
Anxiety is the prevailing condition on most people’s spiritual horizon. If it’s not the availability of a vaccine, it’s a new variant, the unpredictable nature of the development of the virus, or the sheer size of the numbers, or the proximity of it all to us. If it’s not that, it’s the concern of social or economic impact.
We’ve resigned ourselves to what we cannot change, but that which we cannot change is still very hard to accept. Without needing to pin our anxiety to a particular causation (because have you noticed, anxiety often won’t reveal itself to us that way), we can simply acknowledge the stress causes us to be anxious.
Honesty is a healer. Facing stuff fixes things. Pain faced diminishes over time if we can be positive enough not to be discouraged by it — there enters the need for faith.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) can be said to be a recovery period, where the normal intensity of life isn’t possible, where the body-mind-spirit complex in a person — their being — shuts down for vital repair.
It can be seen as a maintenance period before more serious breakdown occurs.
What may seem like death can actually resemble the reformation of a life, each year, just as each calendar year we all need some recovery time. Perspective can help. If it’s a low time, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or even physically, we can think of it as a time our bodies are checking out — for our longer-term health.
If we won’t take ourselves out of service, we may find God will do it for us.
Just about everyone is more exhausted than ever, especially those who’ve been completely redeployed this year. I know some who literally haven’t switched off — haven’t been able to — for over six months, and some for much longer. But there’s also the hypervigilance people are exposed to.
It seems this life with all its constant barrage of stuff coming at us is forcing us to a decision point. We’re at war against a biological hazard. And like with all wars we’ve fought in history, we just need to keep going while we’re at the frontline in the trenches.
Grief is what so many people have experienced as a result of the past 300–360 days or so. With grief comes responses to loss that we cannot reconcile. It throws us for such a loop we cannot help denying the incomprehensible reality, or get angry or get depressed about it.
Recurrent thoughts of wanting — no, needing — things better, different, changed somehow, back to normal (whatever that is) are to be expected, yet it throws us into a place we don’t like being in.
One thing we can give ourselves is some allowance for living in a time nobody saw coming.
As a global society, we should have seen it coming, but we didn’t. We’re wiser in hindsight. As a human race, perhaps we feel more human than ever. That should be a good thing.
Knowing things will not change remarkably come January 1, 2021, actually helps. We don’t need to deny reality, bargain for a better day, or remain in frustration.
This year has taught us some vital life skills for living through an ‘unprecedented’ time.
You and I are actually better people, better prepared, better resourced, better situated for a New Year. 2020 plunged us into war and it has prepared us to expect what we don’t expect when we least expect it.
One thing we can resolve to do more next year is to work with one another the best we can. Being at harmony with others — as much as that depends on us — is a gift to all.
Photo by Raquel Moss on Unsplash
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