It’s March Again…
Depending on who you are, your reaction to Monday morning was either “It’s March already!”, “It’s March again?!”, or “What do you mean? It’s never not been March!” With the anniversary of the first shutdowns in North America approaching I thought I would take a moment to reflect on a year nobody saw coming. Since the last time I organized my ramblings into something resembling prose my life has changed dramatically. I got a job(!), had a couple mental breakdowns, started therapy (which, if you have the means, I highly recommend), but most importantly I survived. Day in and day out, one-step after another, through good days and bad days I, we, endured and for that, we have accomplished the impossible.
If I were to take a lesson out of the isolation and loneliness of the past few months, it would be the idea of compassion. More accurately, self-centered compassion. I have realized that the only person who’s going to be with me for the rest of my life is the guy inside my head, so the least I can do is be nice to him. And look, I know this isn’t reinventing the wheel here (although I’ve never understood why we hold that up as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, whoever did it just looked at a tree and said “let’s make that smooth and sideways”) but for me this was an important step, the acceptance that I have been horribly unkind to myself, and the willingness and commitment to remedy that.
What does compassion and kindness mean for me? The first concept is forgiveness. Constant, unwavering forgiveness. Forgiveness for past mistakes, for current, and for future ones. The knowledge and acceptance that I will never be perfect and that is okay. That it is good to have standards and not meet them sometimes, and that everyone, every single person on this earth, always deserves a break, especially me. Second, it is about judgement. About refusal to accept personal or external judgement. My failures and setbacks are not moralistic representations of myself, not going to the gym one day does not mean you are uncommitted to fitness. Finally, it is about the journey and the effort. Always striving to improve and trying to enjoy and appreciate that struggle. Each day is a new challenge and there is always more to learn.
With all that being said, the third idea is by far the most important. It’s a constant work in progress and way easier said than done. But at a certain point I was just tired of waking up every morning with the same kind of hopelessness and dread for the day, and expectation of some magical time in the future when it’ll all be better. No matter who or where we are in the aftertimes, when lockdowns are a thing of the past and Twitter is more hockey than epidemiology, I hope to look back on myself and say that I have grown, through struggle yes, but grown nonetheless. I am hopeful that will be true.
Anyways, those have been my thoughts. I’m not sure when I’ll write again, when I tried to do this before I wanted to keep to a strict schedule every few days and very rapidly realized that wasn’t going to happen and kind of quit (see items 1 and 2). This time I’m taking this blog less seriously and will write when I feel like it or have something to say. Until next time my loves!
