As we step into the last days of 2020, I’ve been considering how to set my intentions for the new year. I mean, this one has been challenging on almost every level. We started with fires burning what seemed like all of Australia. One of the NBA’s greatest players died in a helicopter crash. There was the impeachment spectacle. As police shootings of unarmed Black men continued to demean our culture and the Black Lives Matter movement took shape and took to the streets, imploring us to radically confront institutional racism. There were earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, explosions at fertilizer storage facilities. There was the election that took weeks to call. Oh, and there was/is COVID-19. Friends and family perishing because of the virus, the economy doing a bizarre crash/recovery dance depending on how much money you had to start with; “Stay Safe/Stay Home” orders; restrictions on travel and gathering; conflicts over masks; difficult decisions about how to spend the holidays; and more.

It has been a rough year. If for some reason we’ve become a little numb to all that happened, we can refer back to this site .

My first inclination, when I started thinking about 2021, was to list all of the things I want to be different. And certainly, my greatest hope is for the COVID-19 virus to stop killing so many people. But I don’t really have control over that…so I held a question of not what to put on my intention list, but first, how to actually think about it.

While letting it roll around in my head yesterday, I noticed several birds riding on the stiff winds blowing around the island. Maybe the birds were struggling. Maybe they were having to expend more energy than normal to do their daily chores. Or, maybe they were being held up by the wind, given a chance to let go and yet remain floating above the fray…maybe they were able to shift their perspective on what was happening below. Maybe, just maybe, they were even having a bit of fun?

I will never know, but thinking about it offered me a different way to think about how to set my intentions for what we hope will be a healthier year for all beings.

With the wild diversity of challenges we faced in 2020, how were we held up? At times, it felt like we were struggling against a never-ending wind…but to use bird terms, didn’t we keep flying even when it felt like our wings didn’t work? What were the things that kept us “airborne”…and can we think of some of them that we want to keep in our lives even after the pandemic eases?

Between now and the stroke of midnight that separates us from 2020 and pulls us into 2021, that’s what I’m going to be thinking about. I have to believe that in spite of all that was painful in this year, there are things we don’t want to leave behind, and that our intentions don’t have to focus solely on change…they can include thoughts on how to keep some of the good that helped us stay upright during the bad.

If any of this resonates with you, maybe we can share some of our lists next week?