2022. We made it. Just barely, but we made it.

Although the level of uncertainty surrounding this next year parallels that of last year, I have much higher hopes this time around. I believe this year and the ones to follow will be themed with immense improvements in resilience, both on a collective and individualist scale born out of the cliché “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Albeit our meeting face to face with varying degrees of suffering has been difficult, I have no doubt that the majority of us will be able to alchemize magnificent change in our lives as a result of this exposure.

Something you realize rather quickly when you begin to take on a lifestyle and attitude that is oriented towards resilience is that one can make great use out of the various faces of suffering. Just like learning how to drive a car requires one to actually drive, one must actually experience adversity to develop and hone resilience. Admittedly, suffering is nothing new to life, but there is something uniquely useful about a form of suffering that is collective and constant across populations; we’ve all felt the weight of this thing in some way or another. And when we suffer together, we are much more likely to come out of it on the other side with new found perspectives, skills, relationships, and attitudes. I think however, the sooner we can collectively recognize the requirement for recovery, the sooner we will be able to actually make lemonade out of these very strange lemons we’ve been given.

Afterall, although one cannot learn to drive without driving on active roads, that’s not actually where one learns to drive, but rather where they are exposed to the conditions that one is to learn and adapt to. The learning happens when one isn’t driving, during down time, while neurons that have been recently activated are rewiring, restructuring, and organizing themselves such that the next time we get into the car, everything feels that much more familiar and comfortable. Also known as the consolidation phase, learning cannot happen without it; we need downtime to recover and restore. It’s in the down time where the true changes occur. And I think that’s been a big missing piece over the last 2 years. And if we could recognize this biological fact and allow it to guide our behaviour and choices, we would be far more equipped to begin to put all this chaos to use.

And it’s understandable that we haven’t been able to quite yet. Here we are, all having been exposed to a variety of stressful and difficult experiences that is otherwise highly conducive for radical adaptation, however given the context, we can rarely, if ever, let our defenses down. The nature of the situation always has us questioning: “Did I catch it? Did I pass it on unknowingly? How bad is it going to be when I get it?”. And those are only the questions that are directly related to the situation, not to mention all the peripheral and tertiary outcomes of this situation.

There has been very little reprieve from the worries and stresses.

But I’ve noticed a shift. Both in the larger, socially connected world, and in my own corner of the world; people have begun to give up some of the less-than-necessary components of their lives in order to actually reach states of comfort and relaxation, and they’re okay with it. As opposed to a few years ago, taking some down time would almost be sinful, especially to the non-stop productive types out there. But even they are beginning to notice the value of genuine down time and how taking time to restore actually translates to feeling much, much better later on.

So that’s the goal for this year. First, is to realize that the value of downtime and recovery periods cannot be overstated or undervalued, and then to consciously improve the quality of that downtime such that we aren’t requiring weeks in bed or stopping everything so that we can feel restored. It’s about learning to skirt the line of “Ah, I’m feeling a little off today, I’ll take a few minutes or an hour at some point today and consciously create a psychological and physiological state that invites in restoration and relaxation”.

We’ve learned many things over the past few years, and the most potent lesson for me has been that I cannot rely on my environment to dictate my internal state. I just don’t do well by allowing the outside world to influence me without any form of mediation. And I’m so glad to see people beginning to realize this in their own lives as well.

I think that’s what resilience is all about at the end of the day; its an attitude and lifestyle that is oriented towards creating a reality that you enjoy, rather than being spoon fed a mediocre reality that we are forced to cope with and learn to enjoy. It’s a worthy endeavor to fight for, and we’ve seen what the world looks like when we allow that to happen.

So let’s make make lemonade and let 2022 be a fruitful year, and fill this world with proud, capable, and resilient individuals