I Don’t Have To Be Grateful For 2020, But I Can Learn From It
In the middle of the absolute craziness of this year, I have found a lot of reasons to find joy in the last 365 days.
I understand that so much of that is because of the privileges I have in this life and the bridges that I didn’t have to cross this year, as many others had to. While a majority of the last several months have left me feeling depressed, disappointed, and hopeless in many different facets of life — there are several lessons I’ve learned this year that I would not take back. The most important one being that the horrible and the beautiful exist together. They’re often intertwined in one big mess, constantly reminding us that life is never just one-sided.
I truly believe that the greatest lessons we learn in life are often met side by side with the greatest defeats, and they often accompany one another to the finish line.
I’m not a believer in toxic positivity or even toxic gratitude. I don’t think that you should be grateful for things because you have to or because someone is telling you to. I don’t think you always need to find the silver lining or force something good to come out of every situation. However, I believe that you can always learn, and it doesn’t have to be positive.
Sometimes the lessons that we learn knock us to our absolute rock-bottom, and they aren’t good experiences accompanied by silver linings. You don’t have to rampage through situations to find the positive, but you can always reflect. It will never cost you anything to be introspective, look within yourself and others, and observe what took place. In my process of doing that, I realized I actually learned a lot this year, whether I signed up for that or not. Some of the lessons I learned this year were on a more global scale, and some were very personal. The thing is, that’s the way introspection goes. What I get out of it is not going to be what you do.
LESSON #1: Small moments are actually massive.
I used to take so many things for granted, like standing front-row at my favorite concert, having a group of people over at my house for a game night, or wandering around the store for hours with no agenda. While I really miss doing these things, and I long for the day these types of activities return, I also have grown such an appreciation for the smallest things. The smallest moments are actually my favorite, and I’m learning that many mundane tasks aren’t mundane at all; they’re amazing.
LESSON #2: Romanticizing your life is actually really fun.
I used to think that romanticizing your life was a bad idea. I thought if you made things a bigger deal than they are, then you would just be let down. However, this year I learned that romanticizing the smallest details, the seemingly unimportant moments, is actually really fun. I make everyday things a big deal now because they’re a big deal to me. I get giddy when I can smell my morning coffee, I sing in the shower, I feel butterflies when I drive, and the sun is setting. I’ve tried to take the most natural and unplanned moments and embrace them with so much love and excitement.
LESSON #3: We hold onto relationships that have already ended.
I learned pretty early in the year that when you can longer go about your typical socializing ways, that some relationships naturally fall away. Let me repeat this. There are some friendships, relationships, and connections that we continually force, and until situations allow, we hold onto them when we should definitely let them go. I’ve learned that when you let go of relationships that no longer serve you, you create a space for people to come into the life that is ready to meet you where you are. Remember, sometimes relationships end, but that doesn’t mean you failed.
LESSON #4: Your story is not my story. We are individuals in a collective.
This year, many moments embraced us all in collective struggle, something the entire world was going through. Despite all of us existing within the same situation, our experience is so personal and so different from everyone around us. We have to learn how to understand that even the same series of events affects two people completely differently.
LESSON #5: Avoiding your feelings is avoiding growth.
Perhaps the extra time in quarantine, or a large amount of time spent on my phone, caused me to realize that I had a lot of internal work to do this year. I tried to dig deeper than ever before, to examine every belief I have about life and love and see what I come up with. It has been the most fulfilling and invigorating experience of my life. I’ve removed beliefs that no longer sat well with me, and I’ve gained a new lens for the world in its entirety.
LESSON #6: We avoid feelings by being busy.
It becomes really evident when you can’t do all the things you used to do, that being busy was just something to help you pass the time. When you are forced to sit with the things that have been keeping you up at night, you have some beautiful and heartbreaking realizations. We need more time to sit, sit with nothing, with no agenda, and be so that we can actually feel.
LESSON #7: People are very courageous.
I can’t tell you how many times I saw people who went above and beyond the normal human realm this year. People who stood up time and time again to fight for other humans they didn’t even know. People who worked late hours. People who protested. People who put themselves to the side and collected the courage we all needed.
LESSON #8: Planning your life is kind of pointless.
I’m not sure where the “this is where I want to be in 5 years’’ trend developed. While it’s not all unhealthy, it does have a lot of negative side effects. When we’re so caught up in the agenda that we want to have, we miss out on the one truly in front of us. We’re always chasing and never just enjoying ourselves. We’re always waiting to arrive and never just staying. We’re never content, and it may always be our downfall. Learning to live, to exist is one of the best lessons this year taught me.
LESSON #9: Love will find you in unexpected places.
One of the greatest things I learned this year was that sometimes the love I was searching for was sitting right in front of me. I was too busy looking for what I thought it should look like and realized that exactly what I needed was spelled out perfectly. Love will find you when you’re least expecting it. When you stop rushing love, it will slow down for you and come to you. When you stop praying that someone will come into your life and fix you, you will start living and find your people. Love also doesn’t always come in the form of people. Love comes in art, creating, existing, breathing, moving, and in a million different ways. Let it find you and be open to receive it.
LESSON #10: You truly can always change who you want to be.
Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned this year was that you can always change your path. I had many plans as to how I wanted this year to go (as we all do), but I feel relieved that my plans got changed to find myself along the way. I also feel relieved that I don’t have to explain myself to anyone at the end of the day but myself. At the end of the day, I have to disappoint every other person before I disappoint myself. At the end of the day, it’s me coming home to myself. So I will continue to reinvent myself and evolve a million different ways throughout my lifetime, as I believe we all should. You can truly always change who you want to be.
So I hope —
whatever this year brought you, that it leaves you at least learning something. Even if it’s something that you didn’t want to learn, even if it’s painful to get there. I hope that it sparked something in you, that something lit your soul on fire. I hope that even in the midst of pain, you choose to dive into what you’re feeling. Most importantly, I hope you know how brave you are for being here this year, simply just going to day-to-day.
All my love,
Isabella
