{"id":479,"date":"2021-01-04T17:38:20","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T22:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=479"},"modified":"2021-01-04T17:48:57","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T22:48:57","slug":"2020-hindsight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"2020 Hindsight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>A simple enough question. A little small talk opener at a recent \u2018bubble\u2019 dinner. \u2018So how do you like living in Oakville?\u2019 Just the sort of query that invites a one- or two-word response, a quip, a tossed off but pithy answer. \u2018It\u2019s great\u2019. \u2018Guess I\u2019ll have to keep working for another few years!\u2019 \u2018Really good time to trade in the snowblower for the Porsche.\u2019 But nothing came out.<\/p>\n

Our time in this newly adopted community has coincided with last calendar year: 2020. And I was speechless. At the very least, I was taken aback at how an innocent conversation starter could stir such deep and complicated feelings. And I was equally convinced that my son in law didn\u2019t really want to hear the extended version. A little Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> would have suited him nicely.<\/p>\n

The early days of January are generally given over to resolution and resignation, expectation and examination. The twelve months stretching out before us are greeted with a blend of hope and anticipation; the year just closed demanding a definitive summary verdict, an indictment. Auld Lang Syne\u2019s<\/em> sentiments aside, the celebration that, in normal times, greets the stroke of is more attached to the relief of having put pay to a year past than to regret its passing; to the welcoming of a new and blank canvas.<\/p>\n

At risk of shutting down the evening\u2019s chat early on, I begged his indulgence and came up with a rework of one of my go-to\u2019s: \u2018It\u2019s been neither the best of times, nor the worst of times. . .\u2019 (with apologies to Dickens.)<\/p>\n

On reflection, and having watched or read the piles of retrospectives of the year just past, I was struck by the parallels between what had unfurled as a truly \u2018different\u2019 twelve-month and the truthful answer to my son in law\u2019s query. <\/p>\n

Publicly, the villains (and victims) of the piece are pretty available targets. Covid has provided the most marvellous of search and replace<\/em> opportunities. Name the context (a world-wide pandemic) and insert one\u2019s personal experience of, one\u2019s reaction to same\u2014 and you have the answer to the \u2018how was your year?\u2019. Equally, although a little less proprietarily for Canadians, politics have overlapped with the plague, preoccupied the media \u2014 and been personalized by most all of us. How was your year typically elicits an \u2018I can\u2019t believe this one. . . !\u2019 The year when everything became truth or lies, black or white \u2014 well, blue or red \u2014 with precious little middle ground. And, in keeping with things of hue, the colour of one\u2019s life underscored the polarities lurking beneath the surface. No shortage of issues to divide, to erase nuance, to push us into the tails of the curve. <\/p>\n

But it seemed too easy, and more than a little unfair to hang a year \u2014 or for that matter, a significant geographic move \u2014 on the peg of a single word or two. To indict 2020 on it having had the misfortune of hosting a 100-year pestilence<\/em>; or equally, the final quartile of a truly villainous administration. <\/p>\n

Part of the New Year\u2019s listen included a podcast my wife had found recently and, coincidentally one that offered a little balance and shading to both of these exercises in retrospection. My statistical antennae started to twitch excitedly as soon as I heard stratification<\/em>, slicing the past year into sections, seasons of experience \u2014 instead of one, amorphous, distilled lump. And Dickens\u2019 words began to resonate. <\/p>\n

Leaving a city of some five decade\u2019s residence, joining a \u2018shared community\u2019 (as condo dwelling is pleased to call itself) with all of the boundary infringements that accompany, downsizing by a factor of three, bidding adieu to professions (sort of)<\/em> that had defined the whole of our working lives could easily be tagged as challenging disruptions. Stunning views, morning and evening, mere minute\u2019s access to family, amenities, choral opportunities, and \u2018banana belt\u2019 (vs. snow belt) weather easily line up on the scale\u2019s other pan. Time and venues to indulge one\u2019s sport passion set up against a precipitous decline in physical function. Leaving old friends, being welcomed by new relationships. The \u2018good news \u2014 bad news\u2019 dichotomies stretch to the horizon. And really are not, in this view, what the exercise of reflection, contemplation is about. <\/p>\n

Change, by definition demands adjustment, not adjudication; acceptance, not avoidance. To vilify (or, indeed \u2018laud\u2019) a year \u2014 or a move \u2014 is not where the learning lies. The Path<\/em> (the experience), as my longtime mentor would say, is not right or wrong<\/em>, good or bad. . . it just is. You\u2019re either on it or you\u2019ve wandered away from it. You\u2019re either learning from it or resenting its existence. Closing the book on a year is folly, if we haven\u2019t reflected on the lessons it offers. Codifying it as the crystal ball that predicts the next, equally so. These are indeed \u2018the best of times and. . . \u2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A simple enough question. A little small talk opener at a recent \u2018bubble\u2019 dinner. \u2018So how do you like living in Oakville?\u2019 Just the sort of query that invites a one- or two-word response, a quip, a tossed off but pithy answer. \u2018It\u2019s great\u2019. \u2018Guess I\u2019ll have to keep working for another few years!\u2019 \u2018Really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}