Create a Better Normal in 2021

Here we are entering the final week of 2020. I'd imagine for many of us, this year has been the most challenging, dare I say, despised year of our lives.

Yet, as I've been saying from the beginning, challenge and difficulty are often doorways to opportunities we'd have never discovered in ordinary times. I hope you have found this year of challenge to also be an awakening and a chance to find new meaning in your daily life, in your relationships, and on your path.

With the COVID-19 vaccines now coming online, there's hope that some time in 2021 we will return to "normal." What does that mean and what could it mean?

Normal is generalized term for the complacency and auto-pilot mode our lives have often settled before an upset. Do we really want to return to that place where we were just cruising along or do we want and will we demand something better of ourselves and our world?

The push for normal next year will reveal the work we have or have not done during this time. Are we more compassionate or less? Are we more in it together or more fractured? Are we ready to take major leaps into the human future or will we insist on fighting old circular battles that have snared us before?

Time will tell. Have we become students of the moment or did we miss the lesson? I believe that many people did find new perspective this year and that we will see that reflected in the years ahead. I believe we have flushed old wounds and chosen new ways to think that will lead us where we are destined to go as a species.

In any case, let those of us reading these words be committed creating a normal better than the one we left behind.

Just in case no one else has reminded you today, you are awesome!

Ray

I am designing masks that express the better world we hope to see ahead. If you have a moment, please check them out and share.