Musings
Towards a Personal Fighting Chance in the Face of a Bleak and Uncertain Year
Here’s an unsolicited but practical advice for the New Year 2021
Don’t dwell too much on the big picture. Focus on your situation up close and personal and pick out the details that you can manage and control.
Big picture analyses and reports abound. And they are mostly cautionary and, at best, iffy. They serve little to lift up the spirit.
Most continue to be primarily concerned with the treacherous COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences — and rightly so. The next big concern is the battered economy from which everyone will be reeling throughout the immediate future. The reports indicate there is very little hope for a quick rebound.
The details in such reports are complex, difficult to understand, and, certainly, beyond your control. The likely effect is one of helplessness and quiet resignation. Plus greater fear and loss of inner peace.
But up close and personal, you can more easily see your real situation within their proper bounds. You don’t lose command completely.
Whether the virus is threateningly close to you or whether you may likely lose your job or livelihood is something you can verify for yourself. If there are remedies to the situation, you can quickly check that out and start making your own personal adjustments and/or preparation. If you need help, you can size up how much, then figure out how you can obtain it or from whom you might be able to get it. You can look at your network of personal contacts and friends and choose whom you can approach. If the first source of help fails, you can reach out to a second possible source, or to a third, or a fourth, and so on.
You are also better able to manage or control your emotional, moral, or spiritual reaction to your situation. You have friends or relatives with shoulders to cry on and from whom you can seek advice or intercession, ask prayers, or even outright material help. You are not alone in a big wide world that is hardly aware of you, much less care.
Furthermore, the variables you have to deal with are usually more bite-size. It is within your power to turn them inside out, and decide how you will modify those that can be changed, seek replacements, or walk away from those you cannot do anything about.
Best of all, you have the power of choice from among various alternatives, big or small. If you are going to lose a fancy job and its perks and there is no immediate similar replacement in sight, you can always settle for a humbler job and tighten your belt with your dignity intact and wait it out until the situation normalizes and more options begin to surface.
What is important is that you have better control of the situation when you keep your sights closer to home.
Also, while you are going through your personal process of adjustments, you can continue being helpful to others in many ways big or small.
If the cashflow is tight and you have no finances to lend or share, there is always your precious time or talent that you can give. At the level of up close and personal, you can continue being busy and productive. Your work, whether pro bono or with compensation, will always be timely and relevant. It all depends on you.
So, let’s welcome the New Year with an upward and forward look — upwards to Almighty God and His Divine Providence for assistance and guidance, and forward within your immediate personal environment to keep facing worthwhile challenges and staying relevant.
Ave Maria!
