What a year.
I know I do not have to tell you.
What a year.
2020 will go down in the history books as something none of us can really yet describe. I still recall the enormous feeling of possibility and promise I felt as late December 2019 moved me closer and closer to an experience that I felt would be transformative, growth producing, and genuinely like no other.
And that is exactly what it has been.
What a year.
Like so many people around the world I felt like the year 2020 would be about the birthing of a new vision for humanity. I was primed to do my part by opening into an inspired vision for a world that works for all. Not theory or concept. It is not a world that works for only a privileged few. Not a top-down power-over system. A world that is working for all people equally. Where everyone matters and lives like they matter. A world that’s foundation is mutual dignity and respect. A world that is fueled by harmony, reverence, and inclusivity. That is the world that I began visioning.
And then all hell broke loose.
Literally.
What a year.
In retrospect my initial mistake was in not realizing that in order for a new global vision to become reality we had to see how we had been seeing.
That was not a typo.
We needed to see how we had been seeing what we were seeing. We needed to see the lens we were looking through. We needed to know the prescription in that lens. The way we were seeing was not in service of a world that works for all. The prescription was distorting reality in favor of a few. We were seeing way too many others as being somehow less than. We were taking sides as enemies against enemies. We were internally and so externally divided, warring against ourselves and against each other. We were killing each other, including disproportionally black and people of color. We were raping our planet and destroying our resources. We were seeing through darkness and distortion, and it was and is having tragic consequences.
And so, in the name of 2020 vision we saw what had been festering only slightly beneath the surface. The intention of our new world vision showed us things we did not really want to see. Because we have seen things that worked for some of us. We clearly saw a world that worked for some and we did not like seeing it. We screamed at others about how we perceived they saw, trying hard to not own that what we were screaming at were our own projections. We have been trapped in a trance. It is clearing. We have the potential of becoming free. But it is messy. Messy and painful and humbling if not outright humiliating.
What a year.
I just paused to reread this, and it is not at all the blog I began to write.
And it is clearly the blog I am meant to write.
I can honestly say that I have not made 2020 an enemy. I have felt from the very beginning that something was happening in the collective consciousness that is in service of a greater emergence. I have remained willing to allow what I need to see in me to arise within my individual field, knowing that as I bring a wakeful and compassionate presence to it, it will indeed be in service to the collective.
It has not been pretty.
It has not been easy, comfortable, flattering. And it has been completely necessary.
There has been so much loss. So much suffering to bear witness to. So many things unfolding that I wanted nothing more than to rant at. Scream and shout at. Throw things at. So much injustice, greed, corruption, supremacy, bigotry, meanness. So, so much.
And I needed to see it all.
And now I cannot unsee it.
And I can vision beyond it.
I can look squarely at the darkness inside myself. I can own my part on the collective problems. I can courageously own where I am like those I rail against. I can claim the log in my own eye and worry less about the splinter in yours. I can wait to do my own work before I cast stones at you. I can peel my blame off of the world and I can return repeatedly to a vision of a world that works for all.
In me. Right here. Right inside of this heart. Here in my line of sight.
What a year.
The old hymn lyric has taken on a whole new meaning. “Was blind but now I see.”
I see more clearly than ever before.
I do not like what I see but I do not have to. I just need to continue to look with as little interpretation and resistance as possible. I need to reopen my eyes every time I flinch. I turn back every time I turn away. I take another look. And another. I make the miraculous distinction between the lens prescription and what I am looking at. I know beyond a doubt I am looking at what I am looking with. Always. And knowing that leads to vision.
What a year.
2020 has been hideous and miraculous. Enervating and inspiring. Suffocating and expansive. Isolating and supremely connecting.
I have no idea what 2021 will bring, and yet I bravely say to it “bring it on.” I am more as a result of having lived through 2020. I have suffered so much loss, and I have met it with both wavering and uncompromising love. There are fewer people in my sphere, yet there is also deeper connection. Having seen what I have seen this past year I am far less afraid to take a look at what arises next. I know more than ever that my vision is transformative. I know that seeing what is not yet here is co-creative. My clear vision is bringing about that world I have so wanted to see.
What a year.
I will not live long enough to know what historians will say about the year 2020. I will not be privy to how they will report about the people who were alive, and they met these great challenges. All I can know is what I am saying about it. About how I met the year 2020. What I learned from it. How I chose to serve it. How I gleaned a new vision from the way I had been seeing.
Whatever future historians will say, I look at 2020 with clear eyes and an open heart. And I say:
What a year.
