My new facebook group called threegoodthings has grown a bit since I launched it on 8th January! I’m excited for its future as a welcoming, compassionate space to show gratitude for the small things (and sometimes big things) in life. The idea of three good things has been around for quite a while now. I’ve used it as a resilience technique on and off over the last five years. When I notice that I’m struggling a bit, I instigate a 7 Day Challenge for myself - without fail, I will feel better after that week and find it much easier to notice things to be grateful for each day.
Over the last few weeks I have really noticed how friends and colleagues are struggling with the current lockdown in the UK, even more than the previous ones. It’s not a surprise given that the weather is miserable, we’ve not led normal lives for nearly a year alongside the pressures of work, finding work or study (with or without home-schooling) – it’s unrelenting. The past twelve months have thrown so much at us, and yet we keep going.
What can we learn from other communities that have had to keep going across the generations? From those communities who have been othered for their race, their culture, their faith, their sexuality, their gender, their age, their class, their physical and mental health… Their strength lies in the perseverance that things won’t always be like this. That a community of like minded people help us to keep going. That the fight for freedom can involve the most enormous sacrifices, all too frequently over many generations. Sacrifices that only with hindsight does the ‘othering’ group realise that they have contributed to. That these abuses of power happen in the playground, in the family, in the workplace, in the neighbourhood and in cyberspace. And yet the human yearning for knowledge means that nothing stays static.
In some parts of life, change happens too quickly and in others it moves all too slowly. This is the nature of being human. How we show up today, in this moment, is crucial for the next moment and the one after that. What small steps can you take this week to help make changes for the better? For yourself, your loved ones, your colleagues, your community? For the people you have previously othered? For society as a whole?
Love Liz