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This week we close our team’s Rememberings and Recommitments for 2022 with reflections from Mareisha Reese, Karen Anaya, and Scott Ferry. 

 

Mareisha Reese 

What lessons do you intend to learn/remember from 2021? 

I choose to see the world through a grateful heart. There is so much going on across the globe, and if we let ourselves, we can focus on the negative and forget about that which is good. I choose to always remind myself of what I am grateful for. Gratitude is a form of self-care. Studies have shown that practicing gratitude can lead to being happier and less depressed. 

I choose to always remind myself of what I am grateful for. Gratitude is a form of self-care. Studies have shown that practicing gratitude can lead to being happier and less depressed. Click To Tweet

 

What do you want/need to unlearn in 2022? 

To not give energy to those things that do not bring me joy, peace, and nourish my spirit. It’s inevitable to go through situations that are trying or that do not feel good, but I will not allow myself to dwell on those or internalize things that are not positive. I will focus on protecting my peace. 

 

What do you want/need to redefine for yourself in 2022? 

I will not stand in my own sunshine. I recently read a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that said, “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” In 2022 and beyond, I will shine bright. I believe that I am not inadequate…that I can do…that I am capable…that I am “powerful beyond measure.” 

 

Karen Anaya 

What lessons do you intend to learn/remember from 2021? 

I am remembering that taking care of myself is part of having a good work ethic. I used to believe that sacrificing physical and mental well-being showed dedication to my work. The truth is that if I’m not well, my work will suffer. If I prioritize my well-being, everything else will fall into place. 

Taking care of myself is part of having a good work ethic. I used to believe that sacrificing physical and mental well-being showed dedication to my work. But if I prioritize my well-being, everything else will fall into place. Click To Tweet

 

What do you want/need to unlearn in 2022? 

I want to unlearn that idea that obstacles will ruin my life. I want to let go of constant fear and take obstacles as opportunities to grow and embellish my story. 

 

What do you want/need to redefine for yourself in 2022? 

I want to stop sacrificing today for better days in the future. I want to recognize the beauty in every season of my life. I want to redefine life as a series of beautiful journeys welcoming the good and the bad instead of a meticulously calculated path through which I need to constantly be fighting against anything unplanned (even if it’s good) to reach a finish line determined by society’s definition of success. 

 

Scott Ferry 

There’s something interesting about setting aside time to consciously reflect on the past year when the last two years have been full of basically nothing but time to reflect…and the future, as unforeseeable as it is, promises more of the same. 

Still, 2021 happened, 2022 will happen, and we must move forward. 

The whiplash that was last year has left me sore and confused.  

At the top of the year, the moral arc of the universe did indeed seem to finally be bending toward justice. Despite the unspeakable ugliness of the January 6 Insurrection, our democracy withstood the presidential transition. The momentum we all channeled during 2020 was beginning to wane, but it was still there—in collective conversations, in the work we were asked to do, on social media, in the news.  

By April, with vaccines readily available and vaccination rates steadily climbing, the nation started to gather again. After a year and a half of isolation and anxiety, we could hug family and friends, we could see concerts and eat out at restaurants, we started returning to the office and connecting as real-life people, not just digital facsimiles operating under still-strange new norms. In a victory for justice, Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder—a verdict utterly shocking in its fairness.  

There were plenty of speed bumps along the way to summer, to be sure, but it felt like the beginning of something new. 

Then Delta hit. Then record droughts and heat waves and wildfires destroyed homes and lives. Then Omicron. Then the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal came in batting cleanup… to make sure we knew that, 2021 was not in fact a whole lot better than 2020. Indeed, by the end of the year it felt like we were largely back to where we were in May of 2020. 

What, then, to make of 2022?  

If the last two years has shown us anything, it’s that predicting even the near-term future is a fool’s errand. I’m going into 2022, then, reflecting on what I can do.

I can control how I act. 

Between the ubiquity of social media outrage, the endless sensationalism of the media’s coverage of, well, everything, and the ambiguity about what we can and should safely do, it is all too easy for me to default to anger and worry, to meet our societal challenges by shrinking away—to, in short, do nothing. 

Instead of checking out, I commit to checking in. For me that means re-instituting my social media diet and instead reading primarily reliable, trustworthy news sources; it means making decisions not based on polarization or tribalism but rather on centering and protecting those most vulnerable; it means channeling the inevitable anger and dismay into productive ideas and, when possible, actionable solutions.

Instead of checking out, I commit to checking in. For me that means re-instituting my social media diet and instead reading reliable news; it means making decisions not based on polarization but on centering those most vulnerable. Click To Tweet

I can give myself grace. 

I certainly wasn’t perfect before 2021, I wasn’t close to it in 2021, and I will definitely not be perfect in 2022. That’s okay. I’m not sure how well I believe that, but if I say it again maybe I will: It’s okay not to be perfect.

There’s not much that’s more difficult for me than seeing the good in even the good things I do. Seeing the good in the bad feels like an exercise in self-delusion. Nonetheless, I hope to learn how to extend myself the same grace and understanding that I readily extend to others. It’s important to not let myself off the hook for mistakes, screw-ups, and boondoggles, but it’s just as crucial to allow myself the opportunity to grow from them.

Hot: Objective self-reflection and the lessons learned. 

Not: Self-flagellation and its accompanying existential dread.

I can control how I show up. 

At home, at work, in friendships, with family, for causes I care about—I spent 2021 showing up in whatever way I rolled out of bed that morning. Sometimes this meant simply being low-energy or unfocused while working, but too often it also meant not showing up at all outside of it, letting family and friends twist in the wind or be carried away from me entirely on the jet stream of anxiety and complacency.

However, each day is not a crapshoot whose outcomes are dictated by a cosmic rolling of the dice shortly after sunrise. 

I know, at this point, exactly the kind of friend, brother, son, uncle, colleague, and accomplice that I want to be. That, at least, is firmly in my locus of control. I commit, then, to being that person.

I commit to this knowing full well that I will fail at times, that I will become overwhelmed and will falter, that despite my best intentions I will likely, on occasion, not truly show up at all. What better way to practice giving myself grace than by working to do so when I’m feeling the most stubbornly insular, the most self-critical?

These commitments, I recognize, will not be easy to fulfill. They’re big ones for me—big in size, in how insurmountable they feel just looking back at them on this page. I hope, though, that the striving will be its own reward. 

In the DEIJ space, I often hear people express concern about doing or saying the wrong thing. I get that. After all, what’s worse than doing your best but being told you still messed up? Fear of failure is real. It keeps us from doing our best work, from doing important work, from having the difficult conversations that lead to reckoning and reconciliation. It affects how we act in uncomfortable spaces, how hard we are on ourselves, how we show up for ourselves and others.

Fear of failure is real. It keeps us from doing our best work, from doing important work, from having the difficult conversations that lead to reckoning and reconciliation. Click To Tweet

In those moments, when I hear people worry about getting it wrong or when I start to convince myself that it’s just not worth the effort, I think about this lyric from a Songs: Ohia song – 

“The real truth about it is, no one gets it right / The real truth about it is, we’re all supposed to try.” 

In 2022, we may well not get it right. But let’s try anyway.