The narrative I created in my mind for 2021 is not playing out as I had hoped, and I’m not happy about it. 2021 was supposed to be when the wound that was 2020 would begin to scab over. But our hopes for that were shattered in the first few days of the new year as the insidious COVID-19 case numbers and deaths spiked significantly, yet another deadly new strain of the virus was identified, the much-hyped vaccine roll out stalled, and radioactive rhetoric and violence tore through our nation’s capital.
We couldn’t turn the page fast enough, in my opinion, on the plague year of 2020. The year was dire on steroids… just really dire. With every single facet of normal life on hold, many of us grieved for lost loved ones, and we collectively grieved as a nation, and worldwide community, for life as we had known it prior to March 2020.
Early on, we could steadfastly buckle down as, after all, “15 days to slow the spread” sounded doable. When that morphed to “30 days to slow the spread,” some soldiered on with the false expectation that by Easter, or definitely by summer, the restrictions would allow us to walk steppingstones forward to a sense of normalcy. We accepted the masks, social distancing, the ubiquitous hand sanitizer, and our longing for the availability of 2-ply toilet paper, all these as the price of admission back to the theatre of our previous lives.
But instead, continuous notes of sadness and loss punctuated every single day of 2020. As the horror played out in the media with stories of hospitals and morgues overflowing, death tolls mounting, the safety of front line health care workers threatened, and stricter and stricter lockdown measures stealing livelihoods, shuttering small businesses, and causing endless economic woes, we were rendered helpless.
And, if that wasn’t devastating enough, all this occurred against a backdrop of wildfires, hurricanes, a contentious presidential election and nationwide protests and violence, making it hard to find language to even describe the ongoing frustrations and disappointments.
And, on an individual level, we had to constantly evaluate the risk/reward of doing every day, mundane activities in person, like grocery shopping, going to the Post Office, bank or dry cleaners, leaving us with contagious feelings of angst and discontent. I know this was not my normal state of mind which left me perpetually off balance and adding to my sense of general malaise. And there were the competing emotions of guilt and gratitude creeping in and nudging against my despair over the ongoing loss of life and worldwide suffering. The guilt was borne of a realization about how good we have it here in Horseshoe Bay compared to other cities and communities, and the gratitude was borne for the same reason.
While it was inevitable that our numbers of cases and deaths in Llano and Burnet counties were destined for an uptick, I noted with pride the constancy of our HSB citizens in adhering to mandates and guidelines regarding masks and social distancing. It’s easy to love your neighbor in HSB and want to do your part to show personal responsibility for the greater good of the community. And, for this we can be forever thankful.
As I extract my own silver linings of the past year, I feel gratitude for the health and well-being of my extended family and long time friends, for extra time to be with my husband, for more hours to go deeper into Bible Study, prayer, reading, exploring new interests and to bond more deeply with the outdoors and every nook and cranny of the comfortable haven that I call home. I marvel at the sturdy beauty of my new HSB friendships and the opportunities they provided to share our reckonings with life and to express heartfelt concerns, fears, and dreams for the future.
With 2020 in the rearview mirror and the current disappointments about how the start of 2021 is playing out, I am coaxing myself off the roller coaster of emotions to a more grounded place. To a state of mind that offers inoculation against unrealistic expectations and the disease of frustration and impatience which can feel like a highly invasive virus.
It is not within my constitution to look upon the ruin of 2020 and think, “It is what it is.” My DNA craves healing and wants to proactively look for resolution, answers, and ways to be part of a solution that migrates us all to more day to day normalcy and physical and emotional healing.
Thus, I have a fractured relationship with tomorrow. I need it to be something that it simply cannot be right now. I desperately want the deaths, suffering, and isolation to end. I long for a national discourse of civility and respect within our United States of America. It feels like it is taking too long to even make baby steps toward those goals, which doesn’t fit my storyline for 2021. So, to heal my fractured relationship with tomorrow, I need to begin to write a story with a focus that shifts from the drumbeat of despair to the heartbeat of hope. A narrative for 2021 that moves away from the devastating impacts of COVID-19 and wondering when that will change to a story line about the sanctity of life and the resilience of the human spirit.
When we were growing up, we all heard stories from our parents and grandparents about the hardships of living during WWI, WWII, and the Great Depression, and to be honest, I couldn’t relate to much of what they relayed. We have been such a privileged and fortunate generation to have been spared prolonged years of trauma, crisis, and witnessing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of our fellow countrymen. Now, sadly we can relate more fully to their stories of the war years, and (like them) we will become stronger and the better for it as we continue to improve our own resilience and determination to conquer COVID-19 and its fallout.
Adopting and mastering a spirit of resilience and determination in the face of a worldwide crisis that touches every aspect of our lives will be a challenge if we can’t shift our mindsets from the darker days of the past year to the brighter days of tomorrow. I’ve begun my work on that project, and I have an idea about how to more effectively coach myself through the process. My own emotional DNA is generally pre-disposed to the upside of things and finding a way to make things happen and move them forward with energy and enthusiasm. But 2020 wore me out. My heart is just bone-tired weary and feels more than a little defeated.
I got an idea about how to lighten the emotional load of all that I am carrying around of 2020 and early 2021 from reading an article this week in TIME Magazine. Written by Walter Isaacson, the piece highlights the role now being played by RNA, the genetic material that he describes as “the molecule that has proven victorious in the COVID vaccine race and deserves the title of TIME Magazine’s Molecule of the Year.”
Isaacson writes that RNA’s “sibling DNA, is more famous. But, like many famous siblings it doesn’t do much work as it mainly stays bunkered down in the nucleus of our cells, protecting the information it encodes. RNA, on the other hand, actually goes out and gets things done.”
One of the ways RNA “gets things done” is that it can be engineered to target genes for editing. Isaacson writes that using the CRISPR system, “RNA can guide scissors-like enzymes to specific sequences of DNA in order to eliminate or edit a gene. This technique has already been used in trials to cure sickle cell anemia.” Isaacson further notes that the technique is now being used in the war against COVID-19 as scientists “created RNA-guided enzymes that can directly detect SARS-CoV-2 and eventually could be used to destroy it.”
Isaacson’s description of RNA going out and editing DNA to create a disease free outcome got me thinking about how I could employ this breakthrough technique to edit the gray clouds from my current worldview. So, to begin the refresh of my 2021 narrative, I conjured up a vision of sending my (pretend) CRISPR out to target my dejected emotional genes to scissor out the foreign, negative, COVID-19 matter leaving behind tidier genes with a lightened, sunnier, more contented perspective that is more reminiscent of the real me. A version of me that is ready to write a storyline focused on themes of gratitude and hope.
I am so thankful for this moment. I feel such gratitude that we as a community have made it to this point with recognition that we are the lucky ones while so many others haven’t made it to today. We are here. Think about all we have endured to make it to today – alive and living in the beautiful Texas Hill Country waiting our turn for a vaccine.
My new storyline serves as a stark reminder that all we really have is the gift of today. We all get to decide where to put our energy and our focus in this first chapter of 2021, and then beyond as the year unfolds. Yes, it’s tempting to focus on the sadness of all we lost in the challenges of 2020, but I don’t want that to be the theme of my story this year.
My new narrative focuses more fully on the blessings of now and the lessons learned from the past year. As I write my 2021 story, I’ll make more space for grief, I’ll breathe through the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach, I’ll miss my old life less, I’ll love with even more vigor, I’ll encourage with greater conviction, and I’ll do more to help others repair their tattered spirits. And I’ll focus even more fully on the power of prayer, the triumphs of relationships, and the privilege of living another day to stay the course and to give praise for our country’s imperative “In God we Trust.”
Now that I have sanitized and disinfected myself from the germs of the past year’s heartaches, I feel emotionally vaccinated to survive and even thrive during what will be the inevitable, ongoing twists, turns and setbacks rendered by COVID-19 in the year ahead.
“Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.” — Maya Angelou
“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” — Mother Teresa
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” — Martin Luther King, Jr
