As the year 2020 is drawing to a close I am among the last of us to celebrate another year of life on this earth in the infamous “quarantine birthday” fashion. Outwardly there is nothing special about this birthday: last year I celebrated the big switch to 30 loudly at a bar with my friends (it happened to be a Saturday so how could I not?), and this year I find myself and my fellow Oregonians in a second lockdown. I am working my regular Monday shift and all I really want is some Pho and salad rolls. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining: when asked what I might like for my birthday I honestly couldn’t think of anything at first, and settled on a small bottle of lavender oil in the end.
Of course there are things that I want, but I’m finding that at this point in my life most of my desires are things that I need to give to myself, or at least wouldn’t or couldn’t ask other people to give me: I want to feel more relaxed and at peace, I want to improve my snowboarding, I want to improve my health both mentally and physically, I want to improve my finances, I want to really push myself to build the business I dream of having, and I want to teach myself to say “no more” to what I do not like and what is not working for me.
This past year has been a gut-wrenching, terrifying, heartbreaking, and limit-testing year for… pretty much everyone in the world as far as I can tell. It has been incredibly challenging on a national and global scale. From what I’ve heard from friends and acquaintances, and from what I’ve experienced on my own, this trend has echoed throughout our personal lives as well. This is a year of reckoning, of seeing the ugly truth, of learning what our limits are. It is also a blessing (if we are able to see it that way) because it is an opportunity for us to stop ignoring our demons and pretending everything is fine, and to really evaluate what is most important to us and what we want our futures to look like. Which relationships are most important? Who do you wish you could spend more time with? What relationships do you want to nurture, or mend? Which ones have you held on to that you now find do not really matter, or have been hurting you? How do you want to grow as an individual? How do you want to contribute to making this world a better place for everyone (and I mean everyone) in it? What path have you been blindly following and what standards have you tried to live up to that are not your own and do not make you happy? What would you rather be doing with your life? What steps will you take to make this a reality? This process of self-awakening is endless, uncomfortable, and can shake our sense of self to the very core. However, if we choose not to shy away and we make the conscious decision to look inward, reflect, admit our faults, take charge of our actions, and take responsibility for our own attitudes and existence, I think we will all come out of this much stronger and better than we were before.
It’s easy to mourn the loss of innocence that fades with childhood and complain about the hardships of adulthood, but for years now I’ve been learning again and again that I am stronger and more capable than I ever thought, and this year has been no different. I’ll take the hardships and difficult life lessons that come with every passing year, because they are each an opportunity for growth, self-knowledge, and self-improvement.