Throughout 2020 and 2021, with Covid dominating our consciousness and restricting our actions and movements, one day has seemed very little different to another. For most of us, the restrictions were most strongly felt in the absence of the usual celebrations and fun of the festive and holiday periods, the getting together with friends and family — partying, sharing food, exchanging good wishes.

I was immensely relieved to say goodbye to 2020, as it had been such a difficult year, with so much sickness in the world. So many of us looked with hope to 2021, for a lifting of much of what we had endured in 2020. However, in so many ways it has been more of the same. Now, let us hope that we will see the tide turning as we ring in 2022.

The New Year is usually a very special time. I wonder, in the larger scale of the whole of time as it stretches through eternity, with no beginning and no end, what is the old year, what is the New Year?

Why do we humans draw this line in time, distinguishing between one year and other? For surely this is a line only drawn by us mere humans. Is it because we need to have this distinction as a marker that we can look to with hope for a better life? An easier, healthier, happier life? As such, for most of us, there was no better a time for that line to be drawn in the sand than the New Year of 2021… and now, we look to 2022.  

Many of us have faced and feared illness, lost loved ones, lost jobs, income, our homes — faced perhaps our worst fears. Without for a moment dismissing the pain and distress so many have endured, as always, we choose whether to see the proverbial cup as half full or half empty. Perhaps the “half full” we can see, is most evident in the resilience of the human spirit. Some of us have “reinvented” ourselves; discovered a previously unrecognized strength of endurance and resourcefulness within ourselves; found a well of concern and compassion for others we had not recognized before; reached out to connect and care for our neighbours.

As we face 2022, let us remember that the New Year is about starting fresh, and lifting up life in a positive way. Getting rid of what is not needed anymore, not only in our homes, and our physical body, but also in our mind. It is a wonderful time to set intentions and start life in a whole new and fresh way.

In this way, each New Year is an invitation to reflect on our experiences of the past 12 months. What went well, what do we feel good about? What did not go so well, and where do we perhaps wish — in retrospect — we had done differently? How have we grown through the inevitable challenges? How might we move forward into 2022, given what we have learned?

Whatever the challenges you may have faced, can you find a wisdom in each challenge? What if you were to trust — or even imagine, for a few minutes— that the challenges were designed for your growth? And if you can trust or imagine that, what wisdom and what strength, did you — or could you — draw from that challenge?

You may well find that if you can find and focus on the wisdom, any existing challenge will either disappear or you will be elevated out of that challenge. You may embrace it, see it as a blessing.

Releasing and moving on from any trials of the past year, and looking towards this New Year, what intentions will you choose, for 2022? What would give you renewed hope and purpose? What would bring you joy? What do you hope for yourself, and perhaps for your world?

Happy New Year for 2022

Pam McDonald

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