The Most Important Thing I Learned in 2019

We are all incredibly flawed human beings.

Everyone has their own issues, their own baggage. What seems effortless for one person requires a monumental struggle for another. Everyone has their own modus operandi when it comes to life. Everyone has their own truths, forged from the joy and pain of their experiences. Sometimes they’re right, and those lessons have served them well.

Other times their experiences screw them up.

But even that’s an overly simplistic way of looking at it. Life is complicated, and every event can no longer hold the significance it once did. That chapter is over; it’s time to move on. What the next phase will be is anyone’s guess. We can only hope it will be better than the last one.

David Foster Wallace wrote a great deal about the banality of human existence. The vast majority of life is boring. We go to the same job, follow the same routines day after day. We dream about change. It feels fantastic when we get it. And after a while, we find that we’re no longer as thrilled as we once were. So we start to dream about something else. 

Every ending...

At the beginning of last year, I talked a lot about change. I was sick of the same old flaws and wanted to do better. But what happens when the newness becomes normal? When you’re once again doing the same things every day? When you slide back into old habits because it feels as though the new ones made no difference?

Today I’m talking about what 2019 meant to me. 

Ironically enough, last year was full of changes. It was a year marked by shifting roles and greater responsibilities at work. By crises and tragedies that came out of nowhere, for all that they seem obvious in hindsight.

It was a year of rekindling relationships with people I’d once been closer to. Some surprised me by stepping forward to balance old grievances. For some, changing circumstances made me realize how important it is to appreciate the ones you care about. And for others, maybe the embers were always there, just waiting to light themselves anew.

At the same time, it was a year of backsliding. Of falling back into old habits and struggling to find the motivation or discipline for new ones. Last year I’d completed the first draft of Wraithblade. This year, I still haven’t finished the second. I haven’t written much over the previous several months, something I attribute to one-third unavoidable circumstances (the holidays charging up like a herd of stampeding reindeer); one-third depression, anxiety, and burnout; and one-third throwing up my hands and deciding to go read or play video games instead.

It was a year that went by frighteningly fast.

But perhaps most importantly, it was a year where I understood that our failings make us human. 

For me, 2019 was about accepting my limits.

When I was younger, I talked a lot about lessons learned, the things I know now which make me better at this whole Adult Life game we’re all playing. Last year, though, I began to accept how much I don’t know.

I don’t know how much I don’t know, for starters. We assume we know things because this is the illusion our brains manufacture, the veneer of assuredness with which we make our way through the world. Look closer, and we discover how much of that knowledge comes down to convenient labels. Practicality serves us well. But what are the names of the plants in your garden? How does your television work? Why do you love the people you love?

What’s happening behind your eyes as you read these words? How did I transfer this meaning from my mind to yours? 

I can seek the answers to all these questions, but there will always be more. There will always be things I don’t know. I guess I’m starting to accept that.

I also don’t know how much time we have left. Last year, someone I knew who should have lived another thirty years passed away. Someone barely out of their teens went through chemo. And despite her cancer, my mother is still with us. It’s a humbling thought, one that can only be answered with sorrow and gratitude. None of us lives forever.

And finally, I don’t know what the future holds. I can make educated guesses, sure. I can decide what I want and pursue the goals and habits needed. Last year I didn’t do so well at these; just got to keep trying. But we’re still blindsided with evolving desires, relationships, and situations. Part of life will always be hidden from us until it happens.

-shrug-

I guess that’s where the fun begins.

All we can do is move forward. That’s the one constant in life: it goes on. We can only accept our limits and strive to get better as we go.

...is another new beginning.

So here’s to 2019 and whatever it meant to you. We’re in a new decade now, on the verge of a whole new phase of our lives. The time is now - just like it always is.

Eyes on 2020, people. Here we go, into the unknown. Good luck and Godspeed.