Lori Falce: What did you learn in 2021?
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“I can’t wait to say goodbye to this dumpster fire of a year.”
“I just want this year to be over.”
“I want to pretend this year never happened.”
This attitude is one I have become accustomed to hearing as December winds to a close each year.
I have heard it from friends who lost jobs. I have heard it from friends who got divorced. I have heard it from friends who lost their homes to foreclosure or fire.
I have heard it a lot since 2016. I’ve heard it prompted by elections that went to the Democrats and to the Republicans. It has come in response to protests and crimes and natural disasters.
And while I can understand and I can empathize, I cannot agree.
Maybe it is because my job always has been documenting things that are often not terribly pleasant, but I never want to walk away from the bad things — even the very worst things — and pretend they didn’t happen because that means they happened for no reason. It means there was a horrible cost with no return.
In 2021, I lost my Aunt Geri to a disease that had been taking her by inches for years. I would not wish away her last moments for anything, because it disrespects every day she put immeasurable effort into the simple act of getting out of bed.
I am not the only person to lose someone this year. In a pandemic, too many someones have been lost. Too many lives have been affected. I understand the urge to stop the pain, but fast-forwarding through it doesn’t heal faster. It is a way of faking it while hoping for better in the new year.
Haven’t the last few years taught us that’s not really a healthy way of dealing with pain?
Maybe this New Year’s Eve isn’t the time to rush out of the old year and headlong into the new. Maybe this year is when we should learn to take a moment to remember, to appreciate everything that happened in 2021 — good and bad — and find a way to learn from it as we head into 2022.
This has been a year where working against each other has hurt us at every turn. Let’s try to reach out, to listen, to cooperate instead.
This has been a year of unfathomable losses and bitter battles where no one came out the winner. What if we held hands and tried to accomplish a common goal instead of trying to achieve victory?
We have never been more divided than 2021 since the Civil War, and it has resulted in nothing but deeper and wider chasms. If we forget how bad those divisions have become, we have no way to build bridges to cross them.
No, I don’t want to say goodbye to 2021, to forget it and hope for better. I just want to learn what I can to build something better going forward.