Peaks and Pits
It’s unintentional, but I’ve developed a small tradition around birthdays or new years or whenever retrospection feels apt. I’ll ask myself or the people in my corner, “what was the peak + pit of the last year?”
There are no wrong answers, but after a few trips around the sun I know there’s only one right way of playing this game- by challenging yourself to articulate gratitude and expose vulnerability, with equal weight given to both.
So in a year when “I’m fine,” was redefined to signal “I simply cannot sustainably acknowledge my emotional state right now,” this exercise is gunna hit different.
Maybe you felt it was impossible to accept gifts during the tragedy, loss and injustice of the past year, or you prefer that the dark, dull or sad moments stay where you left them - in 2020. Or maybe without busy social lives, work, travel, friends and family, it seems hard to sincerely believe that the small things in life may have been the best things in life.
It’s unthinkable to simplify 2020 into a few words- and the last view I’d want to reinforce in 2021 is that humanity should continue to divide into two starkly opposed categories. But, I do recommend you take a moment to find significance and truth in the good and the bad equally- with the hope that we all learn to appreciate ourselves for the terrain we are capable of overcoming in the ever fluctuating contexts of life.
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