About gratitude, acceptance and letting go

It’s that time of the year that we look back on the past year. We remember the good days with a smile and look at the more difficult days and try to learn from them. I am sure many of us have had a lot of difficult days in 2020. We’ve had to deal with lockdowns, kids at home, sickness, we lost our jobs and some of us even lost a loved one.

At the start of 2020 I thought it was going to be a better year than 2019 had been. For me 2019 was no fun and I had high hopes that in 2020 everything woud turn out for the better. I guess I can conclude that I was quite wrong. But as so many of us, I have come to appreciate different aspects of life, I have learned a lot and I have planted some seeds that I will hopefully be able to reap soon.

First of all I am grateful for all that I have and I try to appreciate the small moments more. It was tough with all three kids at home and all the other things that kept on going. I quit a couple of times as a teacher and I know I could work a bit more on my patience. But I guess this time also brought us more together. The kids play more together than they did before the lockdown, we hug a lot more, we sleep together more. Yes, there was yelling and stress, but there was also love and connection. There was undone homework and annoyances, but there was compassion and respect. I am grateful for my kids, they are my blessings and my teachers, my sunshines and my rainbows. I am grateful for my health and their health, for my friends who are like my family here (I am Dutch and live in Portugal so no family close by), for the opportunity to live by the ocean and go surfing regularly, for still finding the time to work on my website, for all those people who are trying to make a difference to make this planet a better place.

During 2020 I have also learned a thing or two about my life, and about life in general. Like that sometimes it´s just better to accept. It might seem that with accepting you don’t have control, but it’s quite the contrary. By accepting what you cannot control, you take back control of how you feel about what is happening around you. When we don’t accept, we resist. And as Carl Jung said: “What we resist persists.” This is because the object of our resistance captures our full focus and attention. We may think that we are ignoring it, but it actually has our full attention and resistance.

Accepting also means accepting yourself and your past mistakes. We feel guilty and bad for the choices we made before and we beat ourselves up about it, until we are so focused on our poor past choices that we fail to see that we can learn and grow from these mistakes.

With accepting also comes letting go. Sometimes we hold on so tightly to what was, or what we think was, that we are having a hard time with accepting what actually is. By not accepting the present, we are resisting the present, and we are not able to let go of what was. If we cannot let go, then we cannot move forward and grow. I am not saying that I am a master at doing all this, but this past year has definitely made me more aware of this process. And the first step is always being aware, right?

Having said that, I wish you all a very happy 2021 and I hope you are able to see some positives in this past year. Stay happy and healthy!