Nana korobi ya oki: in which we try again

2020 was a withered year - one that hastened slowly in that every day staring at the same four walls went dreadfully slow but the whole year seemed, thankfully, to go very fast indeed. It’s hard to believe the 80% of the year was spent under some kind of involuntary restrictions - for me 164 days of that 80% would be spent largely not allowed to leave the house and 100% of it was working from home. Whilst both Ant and I have largely been ok - we kept our jobs, kept our relationship and (mostly) kept our sanity, the after effects are lingering. There’s a strange tentativeness to my thinking now - as if I’ve spent so long living without agency and obeying the strict rules imposed, that I’m afraid to take back that decision making power for myself. Personal decisions are now full of uncertainties and caveats with plans more fragile that they’ve ever been before. The big decisions that we want to make - where and when to travel, what to invest in, what to participate in are all hedged with uncertainty. And I’ve never been good with uncertainty.

I have spent some time thinking about this however and decided that rather that regret all that I could have done in 2020 - all those spare hours! - my learning for 2020 is that it matters not what didn’t get done or achieved but what I have learned and what will be different. I’ve always know, on an intellectual level, that there are no quick fixes in life and anything of real worth requires struggle and perseverance. I think that now I’m learning this at a soul level. Success might not be quick, it’s not guaranteed and might not necessarily be visible: what matters more is that we keep trying - we keep getting up everytime we fall.

And so, I hope that 2020 is a year where the richness will be in the years to come - that maybe the fear, falling and failing have built a deeper well of resilience and that the confronting reality of just how limited the span of our control is truly unlocks a compulsion to grasp life by the neck and live it to its fullest capacity. I don’t know what exactly the meaning of life is - beyond a wonderful little movie by Monty Python - but I do know that I want my little dash between the start and finish to be filled memories of what I’ve done and not regrets for what could have been.

So…..there are no big goals for 2021, no audacious ambitions but the desire for a life well lived and lived with purpose.