Reflections

I don’t know if it’s the oddity of the world in 2020 or the realization that, despite that oddity, the clock continues to tick time by and moves me closer to making another revolution around the sun, but I seem to be spending a lot of time reflecting my life – not just this past year but memories that are 20, 30, even 40 years old. People who have passed through my life, who haven’t been thought about in a long while, become vivid again in my reflections. Some of those people have passed on, some of them have simply moved past the place where I fit in their life, or I’ve moved past the place where they fit into mine. I think that’s probably normal and something all of us experience through life, but sometimes I look at those same people all these years later and realize I have used the word “friend” far too liberally in the past; so many of those people were more simply colleagues I enjoyed working with than friends beyond work. Leave the job and we miss a few of them for a while, but we don’t give the effort to remain in the same close touch we had when we were together five days a week…. and what we had in common through that time becomes blurry as we go off and focus on the next step in our lives.

Thinking about all of that also reminds me how often we use the term “love” as a word of adoration or admiration we feel for someone, when, in truth, what sense of “love” we truly have for them is simply loving what it is they bring to our lives. More than once, when my chiropractor has done an especially good adjustment that my body needed, immediately afterwards, when the pain I’d been in is suddenly gone, I’m apt to say, “Oh my god, I love you!” Okay, I do like him, would be honored to have him as a friend, and love him with the same capacity with which I love all fellow humans, and fortunately, he knows what I’m saying when I say those words to him, but…. I nonetheless have expressed a personal love for someone who is not someone I couldn’t live without! It is in no way a romantic love or even the love one feels for a close friend. But honestly, at that moment, there is no one I feel I love more!

This year, because of some medical issues, including my dislocated shoulder, I have had to put myself first for probably the first time in my life. I have simply not physically been able to do and to be the person that people have always known me to be. I’ve also had to ask for assistance from my best friend and my brother on occasion, something that it always pains me to do. I’ve always had an internal struggle because I want to prove myself independent and capable, and that makes me not want to ask for help from anyone. And also, when things become really bad, I don’t feel like I really have a safe place to fall because I’ve built people’s expectations that I don’t need a place to fall!

2020 is coming to a close, and I’m pretty sure that no one is going to miss seeing it go. There were weddings and births that occurred in 2020 which were joyous events in the lives of people we love. But all of them were overshadowed by the pandemic that has plagued our world for most of the year. Celebrations were small-scaled and people had to ask many persons they wished to share in their celebration to stay away for precautionary and safety reasons. Pictures will be the only memory of those events.

A friend of mine recently stated that 2020 was a “different” year than all of the previous ones, but there have been good things that have happened as well as bad things. For this friend, a small business that was started in early 1999 grew exponentially in 2020, and the business became profitable within 15 months and remains so. And yes, the business grew in large part because of the pandemic. Many people are out of work, but many people are able to work from home because of technology and therefore still have their jobs. Many people work at jobs for which they are considered an ‘essential’ employee, and while they have had to take more risks by going to work every day, they still have a paycheck and income. Many restaurants have adapted to be able to offer take-out service and even delivery, meaning they could at least continue to make income and keep some of their workers employed. And one of my favorite things that happened in 2020 is that retailers finally returned to what Black Friday was intended to be and closed their doors on Thanksgiving Day, keeping them closed until 6 AM on Friday morning! Retailers, as well, have been able to turn their brick-and-mortar businesses into online businesses in order to continue to make some money and keep some workers employed. And those who did become unemployed because of the pandemic did have a substantial amount of time during which their unemployment benefits were increased to an amount that may have made them more money than their paychecks did!

I want 2020 to be over simply because I want all of these reflections to then go away as I look forward to the next year in my life. I remain a pessimistic optimist about the future. I want to be able to stop dwelling in what I’ve lost over the years of my life and reprogram my brain to count all of the things I DO have in my life. It’s not a palace, but I have a place to live. I’m not eating filet mignon every night (not even every year, to be honest), but I have enough food to feed my body. I do have health issues, but I still have all of my limbs and my body still functions, even if it’s slower and sometimes with mild pain. I have the best brother in the entire world and a pretty fantastic best friend who continue to be willing to ‘put up with’ me. I have other dear friends out there in different parts of the country – and the world – who care about me and my welfare.

I had all of those things in 2019, and I’ve not lost them in 2020. So my final reflection may be this: Learn to be more grateful for having what you need and less whiny about not having everything you want. In that light, I too am able to say that 2020 has just been a ‘different’ year.

POST SCRIPT: I have decided to take some time to go “off the grid” – to “unplug” – from all social media and socialization platforms which use the internet as their source. Like many, I’ve become numb to a lot of life because of the constant bombardment of negative news and dissonance when it seems obvious to me that we need more positive news and unitedness during these times. I cannot remove those things from the world, but I can remove them from being a constant in my life. This is a commitment of at least 8 days (Dec. 26th through Jan. 2nd) and I may be slow about returning to everything immediately. I won’t be writing blog posts during that time (I’ll jot down any ideas that come to me) nor reading any blog posts either. But this will surely be one of the first places I return to when my self-imposed sabbatical is over.

So, this is my last opportunity of the year to say ‘thank you’ to all of my readers for believing I have something worth value to share. And thank you to all of the amazing writers out there whose blog posts I always look forward to. I wish each and every one of you a peaceful, joyous and safe holiday season, and I wish for all of us a new year that brings hope for a brighter future in 2021!