So we close the door on 2021. For most of us it was a complex year as we grappled with the swift changes and different faces of people behind the masks. It was a year that stretched us in ways that are not clear to us yet. My guess is that it will take five years of living with COVID before we can look back with any clarity and hindsight to see what 2021 really was like.
Now it would be easy to slam the door shut on 2021 and say ‘Toodle oo’, ‘Good bye’, ‘Good Riddance,’ or another choice of words which is best left omitted here. But there were some good things. People fell in love, got married, had children, nurtured pets and chose to forgive. And there were other things as well. The things we learnt that aren’t so palpable. So before we close up on 2021 perhaps we might look back and reflect on these things.
We learnt that we could be resilient people. Well, we had to be didn’t we? We learnt that we could be flexible and when the challenges came and socked us in the right eye and then the left, we learnt that we could be quite magnificent. We learnt that it was OK to ask someone much younger to help us with our phone and that there was no shame if we didn’t get it right the first time. Many of our contemporaries were going through exactly the same torment. Asking for help can actually be quite liberating and that to be able to help or listen, is always an enriching experience.
So by all means close the door on 2021 as you should, but be sure to take these hard earned lessons with you into the room we will call 2022.