Non-Lessons from a Non-Year
By: Marianna Saver
Tags: Life Lessons, Relationships, Life, Inspiration, Culture

Non-Lessons from a Non-Year

Sometimes we don’t need every answer. Sometimes the question in itself is enough.

Photo by brooklyn on Unsplash

I apologize for the lousy, clickbait-y title. It’s hard to think clearly when the past year has laid over your head the same foggy blanket the British sky has placed over its roofs. From where I stand, the urban lights are melting behind a thick, white veil of mist, as if filtered through milk. London has never looked more vulnerable, and I have never felt more practical.

I apologize for the title because I don’t know enough to teach anything to anyone, let alone myself. But this is what twenty-twenty has taught me. A non-lesson from a non-year. I am writing it down, pen on paper, fingers on a keyboard, in an attempt to remember. And if you find something here you feel the urge to remember too, perhaps we both got lucky.

Non-lesson one: Presence

Twenty-twenty will probably go down in history as a year of apocalyptic disruption, but also as a moment in which people from all over the world came together to rebel against stealthy, recurring injustice. A moment we might want to forget altogether but that we also feel compelled to preserve as the image of our wounded and healing humanity. An emblematic moment. And even more so on account of its transience.

If anything, these past months of forced self-reflection have shown me the essential beauty of the most inconsequential moment, the intrinsic magic of the bad, the good, and the in-between. The blank nothingness of most days served as a reminder that every fraction of life, no matter how irrelevant it seems, brings with itself some chemistry that won’t ever get back, an offering that demands to be heard, as if it wanted to tell you: This moment won’t happen again. This moment is all you have. This moment is your life. In other words: you have today. Don’t waste it replaying yesterday or worrying about tomorrow. Life is not a boomerang.

Non-lesson two: Self-education

The recent events that led to the Black Lives Matter protests all over the world are yet more proof that knowledge is the first building block of freedom. To be free is to have access to education, any kind. If we are informed enough, then we can maybe start to break the chains of our ignorance and begin to free ourselves from everything we didn’t know we could overthrow: unfair systems, unconscious bias, poor relationships, common myths, and false truths.

The only way to a better world is through a better society. The only way to a better society is through better individuals. And the only way to better individuals is through knowledge, or at least the humility to admit our lack of it and the willingness to do better.

Non-lesson three: Decisions

Everything happens because someone decided — consciously or otherwise — to make it happen. Nothing occurs by the sheer virtue of intention. Especially not the eradication of a deadly virus. Like writing, where every sentence is a careful construction of one right decision (or word) after the other, so life is a series of deliberate actions.

When, for any reason, we make the wrong decision and things don’t quite work out as we wished they would, the smartest thing we can do is to make another decision. And decide quickly, because time is one more thing we lack and the faster we fall, the faster we rise.

Non-lesson four: Love

I don’t know if I know what love really is about. Maybe I’m too young. Or maybe I’m too old. But I know that it’s the driving force behind most of our actions. Even bad guys would often explain their immoral behavior as a means to get something, somewhere, on account of the ideas, values, or people they love.

We do things, most things, because we love doing them, or because we love the person we are doing those things for. At the very least, we do things because we believe in them, or because we believe in the principles behind them. I don’t know if the past year has taught me enough about love but it has taught me that if you are not moved by love, whatever that means to you, you won’t go far.

Non-lesson five: Appreciation

Gratitude is perhaps the most important building block of any success. Without the willingness to appreciate the present moment as it is, no achievement will ever truly fulfill us.

Saying thank you when we mean it is one of the most powerful feelings we can experience as human beings. Not because it’s a sacred practice. Not because it grounds us. But because it reminds us that the future we so much envisioned for ourselves, always starts from now. Even when now is a global crisis.

Non-lesson six: Making a difference

The Earth may be in pain. The leaders of the world may not live up to their tasks. Some people’s negligence may make you want to lose every last hope in humankind. You can’t undo the bad that’s already been done. But you can always choose to create more of what you want to see: more awareness, more empathy, more love.

All it takes for us to make a difference as individuals is to act as if what we do makes a difference. Because it does. Sometimes one match can start a fire; one line can start a conversation; one dream can start a revolution.

Non-lesson seven: Solitude

Hunter S. Thompson explains solitude as an essential component of the human experience. “We shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way”, he writes. He insists on aloneness as a key component of what he calls “self-respect”, and goes on explaining: “I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

Solitude is different than loneliness. Loneliness is being alone and not liking it. Solitude, poet May Sarton writes, “is the richness of self”. Being alone is how I make sense of life, gather ideas, and make peace with my demons. The greatest, bravest act of self-love is perhaps to go alone once in a while. To walk alone, dance alone, eat alone, marvel at the world around us alone. To learn to stand on our feet, so we may one day stand taller, together.

Non-lesson eight: Questions

Following the recent tragedies that afflicted the black community and shook the world, the greatest gift we could give ourselves and each other is to not be afraid to ask more questions and stop assuming that things can’t be adjusted. There is no such thing as dumb people or smart people. There are only people who are willing to be curious and inspire change, and people who are not.

And if our questions are met with silence, perhaps it’s worth considering that sometimes we don’t need every answer. Sometimes the question in itself is enough. Lasting change always starts with a question: can this be different? Can this be better?

Non-lesson nine: Not knowing

Sometimes our emotions are not for analysis. Sometimes we can feel something and not know why. Often not knowing why is part of the feeling. Often, not knowing what’s going on is a sign that things are moving, that we are moving, whether we realize it or not.

Emotions have nothing to do with knowing. In fact, they are the opposite of logic. We don’t make sense of life by analyzing everything that comes our way. We make sense of life by witnessing and letting it unfold in all the mysterious, illogical ways life can unfold.

Non-lesson ten: Connection

Sometimes, when we feel out of sorts, we seek comfort in dull, trite optimism. A breakdown is the starting point of a victory. A pandemic shows us what we are capable of. An obstacle is there to be overcome. Every tragedy has its own silver lining. And so on.

It’s true, though, that when everything is broken, we have no choice but to start building something new with the pieces we have been given, knowing that nothing ever exists on its own, untouched by what came before. Everything is connected. Everything is moving, morphing, constantly evolving into something else, something greater. So is pain. Maybe one day we’ll look back and realize that every battle we had to fight was only preparing us for the smallest, most important victories of our time.

And maybe the fading city lights I see from my window are only as bright as I allow them to be. In the dim, crepuscular daylight they could be anything. They could even be non-lights, vestigial nonsense of a passing non-year. Something so surreal it almost feels as if it never existed. Something you are almost afraid to forget to remember.