The Matter.

Thursday gave us New York's first snowfall of 2020; its first snow fall in over two years.  It was the perfect kind of storm, enough in the forecast for people to be excited and the buzz of the city stocking up and preparing palpable...but not enough to delay people for days on end or make it impossible to get outdoors.

No matter how old I get, the first snowfall of the year always makes me feel like a little kid again and I happily donned my coat, boots, mittens, hat, and scarf yesterday morning eager to see Central Park in the snow for the first time in my life.  I know that snow can be a terrible pain and we all feel differently about it by the end of March versus mid-December one week before Christmas, but, still.  I don't imagine I'll ever be able to live anywhere where there isn't a least a chance or two of a really good annual snowstorm. It just feels like magic. 

A lot has been said about this year of 2020. The jokes of this dumpster fire year have been made by people far funnier than myself, the reflections on the disaster of our current administration and its misguided (to say the least) handling of a global pandemic will be written about for years to come. I read an article in the New York Times last week that talked about some of the most defining years in the last couple of centuries  - 1865, 1945, 1968, and 2020 - were the four that came to the surface. Years unlike any others in recent history.

And isn't it a marvel how this year started - I remember watching the ball drop with my family and all of us so excited to welcome in a new decade - to how it is ending in just two weeks?  We all have lived a lifetime and then some in this space of 365 days.  And yet, when I wrote my Christmas cards this year, I made a mention on almost all of them about how there is still a lot to be grateful for in this strange and surreal year.  Typically I like to think I am pretty good at counting my blessings but earlier this year I'd noticed I had fallen out of the habit in 2020, every day blurring into another, the news seemingly growing grimmer by the hour.  During the month of November, in an attempt to realign a focus on gratitude and positivity, I challenged myself to write down five things every single morning that I was either grateful for or delighted in. 

If you don't or have never done this, I highly recommend this simple practice. It's amazing the way taking a few minutes to reflect on the many fortunes we have will reframe your head and your heart before the day unfolds.  It probably won't come as a surprise that the majority of things listed in my daily five where small, simple, little life joys.  Of course, there were days when my feelings of gratitude were broad and sweeping - health, family and friends, freedom from want, the good fortune of my life.  More often than not I found myself writing things like: a hot cup of coffee in the morning, getting a real letter in the mail from a friend, hearing the radiators clamor to life each morning in my apartment, taking myself on a walk for fresh air, and the like. 

While 2020 took away a lot of things - things I miss tremendously - like seeing friends and family, traveling, the theater - I think in a way, it gave us a few (roundabout) gifts as well. Don't get me wrong, this has been a very, very hard year and I certainly do not make light of the hundreds of thousands of people who have died from Covid-19 nor the thousands out of work or businesses shuttered.  This country has a lot of open wounds that I fully acknowledge and I am not trying to Pollyanna any of it.  I guess, what I'm getting at is, when you talk to your friends and family now (even if its just on Zoom) no one seems to miss the rat race of running all over at breakneck speeds, nor do people seem to lament material things.  People are missing their people.  

Maybe, if nothing else, we can take that lesson from 2020.  I matter.  You matter.  And in just a few weeks we're going to head into 2021 together, hopefully the better for all of this, the year that changed everything.