Here’s a statement that can’t be said enough: 2020 sucked. It was absolutely, utterly demoralizing. Every day it seemed that one bad thing after another would inevitably happen; we were all just merely waiting for the next catastrophic event. 2020 reminded me of a book my mom used to read to me, “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”. Change the word “day” to “year” and I believe this sums up the entirety of 2020.
More than anything, 2020 made me exhausted- both physically and mentally. I am so tired that some days, I don’t have the motivation to make today better than the day before, or even have the hope that it will. I now expect the worst to happen in any situation, and I am anxious about what will happen next. In other words, I’ve declared myself as a pessimist. I even went into the first day of the spring semester expecting the absolute worst things, as if my own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day was about to happen. And while it wasn’t the best day ever, any minor inconvenience I had somehow become exponentially worse in my mind. 2021 already seemed hopeless.
Desperate to get my emotions out, I did what any 19-year-old college student would do: I complained over a text message. It seemed to be a pretty cathartic way to get out all my anger, and so I vented to the one person who had no choice but to listen to me: my poor mother.
It was her who reminded me that I can’t change the things around me. I can’t control large events, like the fact that we are still in a global pandemic (although I can do my part to slow the spread, and you should too) and I can’t control minor things, like how my professors choose to teach their classes (or how difficult those classes are to comprehend). What I can control is my response and my attitude to these situations. If I go into the day with the mindset that no matter what I do, I will fail this class, then that is exactly what will happen. If I choose to think of the day as terrible, horrible, no good, and very bad, then that is the kind of day I will get.
Although it is February, I am making a new year’s resolution, and I hope you will join me. We can’t let go of the life-altering events 2020, and in fact, we shouldn’t. We need to learn from the mistakes made, expose the flaws in ourselves and our system, and listen to others, not drown them out when we feel like it. But we can let go of the negative energy. We can choose to go into the rest of 2021 intending to actually make it our best year yet; to allow ourselves to grow, learn new lessons, laugh with friends, spend time with family, and appreciate the good.
It is way too easy to focus on the bad parts of life and dwell on them. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that bad things will happen. It’s a fact of life: you will have bad moments. But you also will have good moments. Life is not some hopeless endeavor that we should all try our best to get through. Forgive my sappiness, but it is a journey that we can enjoy. From now on, I choose to learn from the past but to remind myself of the good. I want to wake up each morning and try to make this day my best. And if it turns out to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, I will choose to accept it for what it is, focus on the good, and look forward to a better tomorrow.