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Reflection seems to be the norm for year end musings. 2020 maybe more so than past years. Not generally something I’ve done in the past. Being the generally positive, looking to the future kind of person I am, normally I spend a little time on the past and then start to look to the future. What were the valued personal accomplishments of the last 12 months? What can you be proud of and what could I have done better? Good questions to think through and answer for yourself, not something for someone else to decide for you. Hoping you find good things to remember. 

What does your social circle look like after crashing through the last 12 months? Maybe it looks different, I know mine does. Immediate family has become closer with the concern to be safe in a Covid 19 world, business acquaintances I suspect have generally gotten less close physically and socially, casual connections probably have fallen dormant for now. Connections through social media, always an interesting way to commune with those close to you. 

What about friends that have been part of your life in some way or another for a number of years? Where are they in your life after all the chaos of the last 10 months or so. 

For my part, more recent friends have become more important to me and some of those older friendships have fallen aside. Wondering why that happens is like asking what is happening within the borders of the USA right now. Polarization on a variety of levels is what I see and, in some cases, so extreme that trying to find middle ground is all but impossible. 

Then there are the friends that fall into the realm of long-time friendships, sharing long histories but don’t seem to be able to change some traits that make them less than the friend I would hope they could be. Those are the friends I find hard to reconcile. We all, over time, learn what we learn with all the fallacies that we thought to be some kind of truth at the time. Call that what you will, learning systematic racism, scientific misbeliefs, skewed ideas from a reasonable path due to any number of occurrences and life encounters, good and bad.

My belief is that we are learning machines with all the ability to find new paths and change our actions based on what we see now, what we have learned from history, what we can learn from new experiences and using our good reason to find a decent path leading to equity and success for all. Those longtime friends that can’t find a way to learn and change may not stay friends. Take time to hope they can change for the better but sometimes change never comes. 

Such is the human condition, the more we progress and become sophisticated we become, the more the human condition and what we do stays the same, hundreds of years repeating over and over. 

Then of course, whatever I think and hope for progress may be completely wrong. I can only hope not and continue to learn and work towards a better world for all knowing that path is long and sometimes unproductive. 

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