As some of you may know, I’m not a big fan of New Years.
You can click on that for details or just intrepidly read on.
This year, I think requires extra caution from all of us and how we view this absolutely randomly generated turning of the calendar.
First, let me say a few things about irrational thinking. Those of you that have seen me speak may have heard me carry on about this phenomenon at length. Everybody does it. After some kind of instigating event we will colour that event in some unrealistic fashion that, in turn, generates some emotion or other that makes everything more difficult and generally making us less effectual no matter what the event was. At the root of this irrational thinking is the assumption that things are done to us.
A/ Shit happens
B/ We engage in irrational self talk
C/ We experience an emotion
A doesn’t cause C... B does.
Usually B involves all kinds of catastrophizing language that sends us into some kind of “this always happens to me, the universe is out to get me” spiral.
I know, you’re wondering what all this has to do with the upcoming “New Year”. Well, here’s the thing;
I like situational humour probably more than most. It actually may be one of the best ways to counteract irrational thinking. However, lately I’ve been seeing all kinds of amusing memes that paint 2020 as some kind of entity that really just let us have it. Therein lays the problem. There seems to be this “because 2020” feeling that promotes the idea that this was a year that just randomly hit us with racial and social strife, political fuckery, ongoing environmental crises and a pandemic. Gee, we all can’t wait to get a vaccination, put 2020 in the rear-view and get on with business as usual.
2020 wasn’t an unfortunate confluence of everything that could go wrong did go wrong. That is irrational thinking. No, 2020 was a wakeup call.
Business as usual will just put us into a Groundhog Day loop of 2020.
We are responsible for all of it.
There is nothing sustainable about the colonial attitude of detachment from the natural world that promotes the self centred, populist view that it’s all here strictly for the use of select, privileged groups. That is irrational thinking.
The simplest and yet most far reaching way of stating what needs changing I heard from the amazing Patty Krawec:
“We need to shift our focus from rights to responsibilities”.
There it is.
So many of us have used our longstanding entitlement and our presumed rights to put us exactly where we are.
We don’t have the right to behave however we want at the expense of the planet and those who inhabit it with us that we see as “other”. We are responsible to be in partnership with all people and every aspect of the natural world that we have so wrongly set ourselves apart from.
This past year the word “systemic” has rightfully been at the forefront of many issues. Indeed this shift from rights to responsibilities can only come with sweeping systemic change. It’s a change that must be actively pursued by all, not just by those most direly effected, while others passively cheer from a distance and make token virtuous statements and acts.
No, I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions. However, maybe this is the year for us all to be resolute in being the agents of change that we so need to ensure we truly can “ring out the old and ring in the new”.