Wayne here-

Dinlas usually writes the blog, but he took a few days off to go back to Greece, check on the family, rest and recuperate.

2020 has ended, the year that started with so much hype and enthusiasm. At the end of last year, everyone had their 2020 Vision and somehow all the troubles and worries of 2019 were going to evaporate and melt away, like fog in the face of a strengthening morning sun.

But it didn’t happen, and in a spectacular way. What started as scattered pneumonia-like illnesses caused by a strange virus turned into the biggest world changing event of easily the last 100 years. It laid bare the inefficiency and at times incompetence of not only our world leaders, but also agencies like the CDC designed and implemented for just this type of scenario. It also allowed the opportunity, as crisis always does, for hucksters and scammers to take advantage and profit from the very people suffering most. From selling faulty or ineffective devices and/or remedies to throwing up bogus crowd source campaigns, claiming non-existent COVID hardships in order to make a few quick bucks.

We can, however, juxtapose that with the heroic behavior and attitudes of everyday people who stepped up to do, or try to do, the right thing for the people around them. From frontline healthcare workers making their own PPE out of garbage bags and duct tape in order to continue treating sick patients, to everyday neighborhood heroes collecting food and funds for people displaced or out of work and truly unable to support themselves.

We have seen much this year and even as it happened we all made choices about how to conduct ourselves that ultimately reveal the true nature of who we are as individuals. Quarantine, Levels of socialization, social-distancing, and the attack on personal liberties that some perceived mask-wearing to be are a small fraction of the new terms and ideas we have all had thrust upon us and been forced to process. Many of us doing so in widely different manners.

So here we are, in the infancy of 2021. And just like we did at the end of 2019, we are optimistically, almost superstitiously, clamoring for a New Year to save us.

Just like 2020 is only a number, so is 2021. If anyone in the world still writes checks, it’s the symbols in the upper right corner that we have all agreed denote this passage around the Sun. It’s a great idea, a wonderful hope, and human nature to look to such new beginnings as a time for things to change for the better. But in a very real way, we are setting ourselves up in 2021 for the same heartbreak that we experienced in 2020. Time is a human construct; our molecules, cells, bodies, society, world, galaxy, and universe care naught for what arbitrary symbols or numbers we use to classify, file, or catalogue the events of this year. The universe sees no difference in this orbit around the sun than the last one, surely it won’t be the force that acts to make things better based on our trivial decision to call January 1 a New Year.

But the truth is, we have the ability to make things better with every choice we make in our lives. Choices about how we treat the people around us, help those in need, and give assistance to those in greater need. Random acts of kindness they call it, but maybe we need Patterned acts of kindness. Maybe it’s time we look at those around us and really pay attention to how our behavior affects others. Change does start from within and there is no greater time than now to make that introspective journey. Instead of waiting for the tick of a numbered year to change us and make things better, like a Sequential Santa Claus that will bestow emotional and spiritual gifts on us after the New Year starts, maybe we need to take matters into our own hands and be the 2021 change we wish to see in the world.

Hug family members, show patience, humility, and take a hard look at your decisions and how they affect other people. If our behavior is hurting someone then maybe it’s time to change. Communicate, meditate, explore, and learn to be a student, but as always practice self-care as we love and accept ourselves, but always strive to be better.

I hope everyone who reads this has a better 2021. I also hope and pray that daily change for the better becomes a ritual practiced on a daily basis. Smile more, care deeper, practice empathy, but remember it is always acceptable to distance yourself from narcissists and users for your own protection, until they truly are ready to grow. And of course make sure you are not the problem with objective self-examination.

Come November, lets make sure we are living fully, and not praying for 2022.

Thank you-
Wayne Davids

Image by Elias Sch. from Pixabay