Dear Jessica Brennan,
The year 2020 approached like an endless trip to the eye doctor. You know the drill. You put your chin in the leather rest and the doctor flips a lens down and you hear, “Which looks better, this or this? This or this. This or this.”
We came into an amazing year exactly like that. Hopes were huge and defined, we knew it was going to be the best year yet.
We thought that because the year was called 2020, we were simply going to be able to have this crisp vision with total clarity about the future and reach our goals in a bigger, better way than ever and with ease, because everything was going to be vivid; every view would be in 20/20.
By January our clarity was already starting to be murky with news coming out of China, and by March it was downright sludgy. A pandemic was not part of our 2020 vision you see.
How could this be?
You can’t reach and exceed your goals when you can’t leave the house, and instead of being forward thinking with the tremendous energy and momentum we had dreamt of, the months started passing us by like the flipping of calendar pages in an old black and white movie. March (flip), April (flip), May (flip), June (flip).
No goals met. No dreams realized. Garbage day felt like a special event.
Holidays were cancelled, work was cancelled, social activities came to a grinding halt. What’s going on? This is NOT what we planned.
I think Woody Allen is credited with the quote, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans.” I think we all felt a version of being the brunt of this particular joke.
It takes time to come to grips with the fact that you’re not in control of your life, especially for some of us (she says, putting her hand up). It is difficult realizing that even if your plans are good and noble and needed and edifying, they aren’t happening. Life has a different plan. In this case, Mother Earth definitely did. Perhaps she had had more than she could take. You know that Mum feeling where you are at your boiling point and hear yourself shouting, “Enough! Now get to your room!”
Personally I know that once I learned to let go of what my plans were, and started to look at the way things really are, the ironic thing is, I started to get clarity about things that I hadn’t thought of for a very long time. Things I had given up on even. I started finding pieces of myself, like socks lodged behind the dryer; pieces I had forgotten about entirely. I purged a lot of the ideas that kept me held hostage to things like New Year’s resolutions. With this purge came the ability to remove guilt from the equation. Guilt about not accomplishing every ridiculous thing I set out to do.
In 2020, with all the disruption, each day has been much like the one before it and the one to come, so I have started noticing things. Nature. The pain of loss of connection and how much I can learn about myself in forced isolation when I can’t hide in the endless busy of bygone times.
For me, 2020 has not been a stellar year for reaching goals and climbing to new heights. It has been a time of confinement like endless silent Vipassana yoga, and has achieved the same thing. Nowhere to go but within. Nowhere to hide; exposed to myself as I really am.
And maybe when I look back at this time, and when you look back Dear Jessica, we will see that it was never supposed to be just another year, with a fancy double-number that brands could jump on to sell us more stuff we don’t need, but instead it actually is a year we will remember for its relentless lessons in openness, the fullness of emptying our expectations; the value in connection, stillness and surrender.
Lessons that undoubtedly bring about their own deeper clarity and 20/20 vision in the end.
Love,
Mum xo
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