Hello from the first day of December. How … is it already December? 2020 is now just one month away from being in the rearview; and I know for a lot of us, that’s exactly where we’ve been waiting to see it. Gone. In the past. Buh-bye.

And also … at the same time that 2020 has been truly hard for so many of us … it has brought along with it some gifts, too. The kinds of gifts that can sometimes hide within the folds and shadows of our most painful and challenging experiences. Gifts like …

… being shaken free from hardened routines.
… seeing ways in which the old normal hadn’t been serving us.
… receiving an opportunity to reevaluate what’s important to us.
… opening our eyes to the ways in which we haven’t been taking care of ourselves and of each other.
… sharpening our focus on the things that matter.
… imagining what we might create in the next version of this world we inhabit, when we emerge from this present time.

When we emerge.
Hm.

As I type those words, and now that I think about it … that’s kind of a misrepresentation of how reality works, isn’t it?

Because it’s not like the year 2020 will be some kind of neatly bookended period of time that was especially bad or hard or cursed. It’s just … the world as it is right now. It’s the world, frankly, that we have made. And it won’t magically change simply because the calendar changes.

But it can change. It’ll change if we decide we want it to; and if we show up, and keep showing up, for the work to change it.

The work … in our hearts and minds, in our choices, in our votes, in our relationships, in our families, in our communities, in how we spend our time, in how we spend our money, in how we spend our influence, in how we use our power to dismantle old structures and imagine new ones that will take their place.

Connection, compassion, justice,
love, healing, service,
community, beauty,
truth, goodness …
… may these be the gems we recover from the rubble of 2020,

 and which we tuck into our pockets and carry with us — touchstones that remind us of what we’re learning about who we want to be, and the kind of world we want to make, in the new year. 💎

Love and gems — shannon