We say that to know where we are going, we must know where we come from. In my opinion, this is also true for the wishes of the new year.
2021 has been a landmark year in several ways. From a personal point of view, she showed me the path of letting go and acceptance. Again and again. That’s it, I understood now and I often repeat the famous quote from Marcus Aurelius to remind me. I’m almost there. Agreed, you will tell me? Maybe, but it works.
And as a society, what have we learned during this second year of the pandemic? That happiness is often found in the little things and all around us? That our time is precious? That work is not everything? I wish we had learned something valuable from this time of adversity. Resilience or, better, wisdom.
Let’s be clear, we’re not there.
Perhaps we find ourselves in a certain semi-collective and slow realization at most. Not very assertive, all that. Everything remains unclear.
However, any good sociologist, anthropologist or ethnologist, any good philosopher no doubt, even of Sunday, knows that a rebirth can arise from trials. And from this rebirth, change can be born.
The vulnerability into which the pandemic has plunged us, that of understanding that our life does not care for much, that of feeling that we are not infallible, that of admitting that we need each other and a lot of other things, led us to what? Have we already forgotten?
I remain on my hunger. Yet I had so much hope.
Indigenous cultures are filled with stories, myths, legends and prophecies. These latter all imagine in much the same way a near future in which, as a society, all together, we will have to make a choice between one arid and dark path, and the other, green and lush.
The first path, you guessed it, is the one we all seem to be on. The one who will leave a dry, damaged and heavy earth. The second path is that of a return to respect for the earth and living beings, that of a balance that does not hold on a dollar sign. Other stories, like the Hopi, speak of a fourth world.
How many people will it take to reinvent to learn? Are we so stupid? I’m not lecturing. I include myself in all of this. But I think about it. Or I try.
First of all, the current state of affairs hardly fills me with joy. It looks like we’re in a tug-of-war game in which we have to pull harder and harder from our side, left or right, white or black, to bring down the other team. An extreme polarization that forgets listening, respect and nuance. No mercy for others. Is this what this vulnerability has brought us? A hermetic withdrawal into oneself? Where are our social projects? Certainly not in the return of the Nordics …
What I hope for the next year, what I wish for all of us, is to take the time, at least once and in good faith, to change shoes with the other, glasses if you prefer, and to go for a few minutes walk in said shoes or to see things as the other sees them.
It will take effort in the discomfort, adjust the shoes and focus, of course. But what if that led us to an opening that changed our outlook a bit and made us grow together? It seems to me that just that would already be a step on the right path.