by Cassie Alexander
I think it’s pretty safe to say that we are all happy that 2020 is behind us now. It was definitely a year to remember, and for most of us, we won’t remember it fondly.
When the pandemic hit, so much of our lives changed. We worked from home, the kids did virtual school, concerts were cancelled, theaters closed, sports seasons ended early, and we were told to isolate. It felt like the lives we had been working so hard to build for ourselves had been stripped from us.
In recent years, our society has put a lot of emphasis on finding ways to have inner peace. Uncomfortable emotions are often dealt with by ignoring them, or searching for ways to make them go away.
But, discomfort challenges us to evaluate what we will and won’t accept. If one of the things we accept is that it is ok to be uncomfortable, we could change our perspective and see that 2020 was a difficult year, yet we persevered. It could be perceived as the year that you learned which parts of life you find to be the most important, or it could be that your discomfort led you to an emotional awareness you’ve been missing.
Whatever the case, as the new year begins, I encourage you to lean into the discomfort that 2020 brought and absorb what you have learned from it. Maybe none of us would ever choose to live 2020 all over again, but we can look back on it as the year discomfort made us better.