Lean into Possibility Again
(Originally written for the introduction to the 12.19.2020 Weekly Atticus Newsletter sent each Saturday from Atticus Review.)
`This will be the final Weekly Atticus of 2020. After today, we will take a three-week break and will return to our regular publishing schedule on January 11th, 2021. (Wow, it feels so good to write that year.)
We’re taking a little longer winter break than we usually do, but somehow it felt necessary. It has been, empirically, a pretty bad year for many people for obvious reasons. For me personally, it’s been the most challenging year in my lifetime, and it probably would have been that way even if there hadn’t been a global pandemic, civil injustice and unrest, and an historically divisive election. It’s strange how the public and private challenges have aligned for so many.
I was tempted to use a different word to describe how this year has been for me. I was tempted to say it was the “worst,” not the “most challenging.” Given everything that has occurred, I’m sure nobody would fault me if I had done that, or think twice. But the problem I find myself running into when I start to use the word “worst” is that I have a strange feeling that when I look back on this year in twenty years (assuming I am looking back on anything at that time), there will be many parts of it I will remember quite fondly. I’m pretty sure I…
