Happy new year! I don’t know about you, but 2019 was a wild ass ride. I’d bet good money you’d say the same about your own journey through the last year of the decade. On a global scale we’re facing political divisiveness that just gets uglier and uglier and climate change that leaves entire continents on fire. (Oh my God, Australia.) We keep seeing school and mass shootings, our suicide rate is climbing, and anxiety, depression, and autoimmune disorder rates are escalating too.
It’s scary out there.
Of course there’s good happening. There always is. Glennon Doyle and her team at Together Rising has raised millions of dollars to help people affected by refugee status. Greta Thunberg is traveling all over the world calling out those in power. There’s an illustrated list hopping around the internet showcasing all the cool, big picture things that have happened this last year.
But humans are programmed with this negativity bias—for good reason! It’s helped keep us alive. It might end up killing us, too, but only time will tell. This tendency to remember the nasty things—the location of a pack of wolves, or which berried will kill you—is invaluable.
But it’s not all there is. And, I think, as a species we have to be very deliberate in training ourselves to notice and relish the positive, and to loosen the grip of fear that this bias casts on our lives. A process that is about a million times easier said than done. Because when my partner comes home and tells me that a woman at work commented on how his scent has changed over the course of several months, well, my fear, my negativity bias and my hamster brain all go into hyperdrive concocting realities that all equal deathpainheartbreakruin.
It’s hard to hold onto the belief that I am loved. It’s hard to hold onto the belief that what I’m doing matters. When it seems like the world is collapsing a dozen ways from Sunday, it’s sometimes hard to believe that anything matters.
Who knows? Maybe it doesn’t. What I do know is that living in the grip of fear makes this moment suck. That’s the only thing I can really count on, and it’s this moment I have to keep coming back to. How do I feel now? What can I do now that is nourishing, and encourages growth? Because even if the sunflower is cut down tomorrow, does that lessen the beauty it offered today?
Keep going, lovelies. Please, keep going. I am, in the face of what my brain says are ridiculous odds. But brains lie and odds are for gamblers. I’m not gambling. I’m just here, trying to do the next right thing.
I love you.
Take care of yourselves, and each other.