We Can't Avoid Storms

We Can’t Avoid Storms

I always like to approach a new year by first looking back.

My biggest lesson learned in 2021: There’s a lot in life that you can’t control. I have learned to find peace with focusing on what I can + letting go of the rest.

We can’t avoid storms, but we can wear protective gear. We can’t stop the rain. But we can hold an umbrella. We may get sprayed and we may get splashed. We dry it off. (Or maybe we just get comfortable with being wet?)

I don’t think any of us expected the many storms that have been the past few years. I’ve learned not to wish for their end, or hold onto any one promise for their defeat, because those wishes and hopes have lead to disappointment.

We’re still in it. (“It”, to me, means many things, as I’m sure it does for you.) Who knows? Maybe we always will be.

And so, we continue to learn to weather them. We tumble and fall, but we also get up. We help to pull others to their feet too, because what’s the point if you’re the only one standing? Over and over and over. Until perhaps at one point, hopefully in the not-so-distant future, we’re prepared enough to not fall. Individually, and collectively. We’ve controlled what we could enough to become experts, and let go of what we couldn’t.

“A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor,” as they say. Well I don’t own a sailboat, but I can tell you that these storms have made a better sailor of me. Simply by teaching me how to rock a bit easier with the waves and the wind.