One couldn’t be faulted for looking back at 2020 and thinking “What in hell’s name was that? Betcha none of 2020’s “big events” were on anyone’s Bingo card — a worldwide pandemic… a never-ending election trauma here in America… Racism and bigotry run amok… An economy in free fall. If we weren’t living through it, we’d probably swear it was something we ate haunting us in the night. If only that’s what it was…
And yet… life goes on. It goes on strangely and with way more uncertainty than we’re accustomed to but, it does go on.
From our “safe perch” here in January 2021, what stock shall we take from our experience of the past twelve months? Aside from the politics — which we’ll tiptoe around ever so delicately, treating it like the live minefield it is — how else did 2020 change or not change our lives? What imprints will 2020 leave on the future? Did it improve our circumstances in any way? Did it make the doomsday clock look a little more ominous? Was there anything good whatsoever about 2020?
Better question — has 2020 prepped us in any way, shape or form for 2021? And why do we always have to find out the answer to questions like that the hard way?
NOTES & SOURCES
RANDY’S NOTES
-Virtual presence:
21 podcasts! 25 webinars! Launching a new all virtual platform to help
people move forward in their spiritual journey.
From the Faitheism Project: your saying I was a political skeptic. Have always looked down on others that were skeptics but you helped me look in the mirror (like sister’s minivan versus my own). Thanks to you I will be more understanding of skeptics but also I have a deeper understanding of what my spiritual journey does for me. One thing it does is give me hope.
Better than guilt for doing well is generosity. Plenty of chances to do that. So many opportunities before us as other doors are closed on us.
It is about positioning, isn’t it? Zoom, Amazon, UPS, research scientists positioned well (not by their using a crystal ball, so not about them being wiser than others) but others not positioned well for this and have gotten hit.
Exodus journey is theme (see instagram)
2021: Sustainable, virtual platform. Looking for “survey team” for this. People to help me map out the contours of this path so we can help people who are struggling to move forward spiritually.
Neutral zone.
ALAN’S NOTES
Should one feel guilty when truly terrible times aren’t altogether terrible for you? While the pandemic has certainly altered every business I’m in or trying to get back into, it’s also created situations that cry out to be taken advantage of. When life gives you lemons, make daiquiris. Think of something else you can turn lemons into and make that too.
2020 has exposed a lot of things we probably thought would never get exposed. A lot of truth about what and who we really are, beneath the self-mythologizing. America is still in the throes of its “original sin” — slavery. Every terrible impulse that prevented us from making this obscenity illegal still glows inside us. But circumstances also have brought us closer to really confronting it for the first time. Count on it getting ugly. Nonetheless, a very real renaissance lies on the other side of that “curtain of fire”.