Thursday, October 1, 2020

Twenty-Twenty, Learning To Fly and Life Lessons

 The year 2020 has turned out to be a doozy by all kinds of standards.   It started off innocent enough but barely were we into the year, we began hearing rumblings of a disease --- a pandemic --- unlike any the world has seen since 1918.   Most of us had some vague notion of what a pandemic is but no real experience or idea what it would mean to us.  We soon found out that our lives were all about to be upended in ways we couldn't imagine.   

So in the 9 months or so since we heard about the virus, Covid 19, a running joke, meme or saying among us whenever bad or unpleasant things happen is to  say, "Well, it IS 2020."   As if just the year alone accounts for any calamity or malady that befalls us.   We forget that our lives are a complex tapestry of events --good and bad-- that accompany us through our lifetimes. 

Sometimes we wrap ourselves in a cocoon of denial that seemingly insulates us against the evils and troubles that can befall us.   In a childlike innocence, we live as if we can avoid life's worst calamities or realities by simply denying they will happen to us.  Permit me to illustrate with a story from my childhood.

When I was about nine or 10, my sister and I and our playmates from across the street would run around in their front yard and make wild leaps from a slight incline onto the pavement of the street.   Our goal was to actually stay aloft long enough to experience the sensation of flying.    We were fully familiar with gravity and had probably even studied a little about it in school by that time.   But there we were, leaping and shouting to one another saying boldly, "Look!  I stayed up a little that time."   It was as if we wished it to be true, it would be true.  But alas, it was never true and only the imagination of our young minds allowed us to believe we could fly -- if only for a tiny fraction of a second.   The reality of gravity never lost its grip and soon brought us right back down to the ground.  

So it has been with Covid-19.   It has brought unimaginable tragedy into the lives of over 200,000 Americans and millions around the world.   Many more will live with its after effects for an unknown number of years.   So it has turned out to be a very bad event in the history of the world.   And that does not even mention the economic and social problems that have come upon us as jobs are lost, schools closed, business closed permanently and families being split apart as loved ones lay dying.    

2020 has not just had disease that has plagued us.    There have been major fires in the west, hurricanes on our coastlines, flooding in the heartland and we have begun to wince and duck whenever the nightly news begins with another round of tragic or sad news that has happened.   It has gotten so bad that we often fail to notice that there are good things that have happened in this same year.    The balance of good to bad is still happening to us but we let the bad blind us to what else is going on.  

I say all of this to remind us that with every loss, with every tragedy we add another layer to our ability to cope with our sometimes chaotic lives.   It's not to say that we must have the bad with the good.  It is to say that we will have the bad as well as the good.    There are life lessons in everything we experience.    When we are young we often get blindsided by the seeming unfairness of things.   We rant and rave against the injustice and may think it is all hopeless.   But one thing I have noticed is  that as we age, we get a little bit of wisdom that teaches us that no one escapes these events.   No matter what your station in life, certain things will come your way.

My grandmothers were both strong resilient ladies who had so much sadness and tragedy in their lives, it is hard to imagine it.   In their later years, I remember them as women who faced illness and death of loved ones with a grace and acceptance that younger ones often cannot achieve.   Their life experiences and lessons built upon one another so that while still sad and grieving, they did not allow it to devastate them to the point of being unable to carry on their own lives.  

This is to say that if there is a point to our lives, it is that we can grown stronger than we imagined and can come out of our cocoon of denial to realize what we go through, what happens to us is part of  being human.   We don't have to like it.   In fact, it is normal to push back against it.   But denying it is  as foolish as denying gravity and thinking we can really fly.   

Life lessons happen all around us.   Sometimes they happen to us.   They are events so powerful they change us and change how to react to the next event that comes along.   I hope all of us can take the good and bad things that have occurred in 2020 and incorporate them into who we are so we're stronger and better able to cope with the next thing that comes along because as surely as we are here witnessing life on this day, another event -- good or bad -- will come along.   We will need coping skills to guide us. If we're looking to a point to life, it is that we're on a journey of learning and growing.   It is up to us whether we incorporate those lessons into our arsenal of skills -- that great tapestry that surrounds us throughout our lives.          

 

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