A Cliché Survival of 2021

By the end of 2020, everyone suddenly became a soothsayer and was foretelling what 2021 would entail.  As future-telling designers, we dressed 2021 in all sorts of pandemic-ending garbs and pre-celebrated all the things that we believed would have followed.  But 2021, like the woman who refuses quit with her three offsprings in tow, stripped herself of societal dictates and showed us that 2021 was going to do and be what 2021 wanted to do and be.  She forced us to change plans, to be still, to find ourselves, to introspect, re-imagine, to wallow in self-pity or to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and live.  Whatever the case, if you are reading this, you have made it through 2021 and have started to make your way into 2022.  Hopefully, you will have learned that the plans you have for the year may not always manifest in ways that you imagine them to be.  The fact is that they could go horribly wrong, or they may end up being better than anticipated, regardless of the hardships that we may encounter.

For me, the challenges of 2021 came out swinging, but so did the reasons to celebrate.  If anyone told me at the start of 2021 that I would have completed/accomplished the things I did by the end, I would have said a resounding, “NO SAH”.  Now that I am sitting on the opposite side of self-doubt and major drawbacks that came as a direct result of the pandemic mania, I am realizing that clichés are more than just overused phrases/words that we are instructed to avoid when writing; they do ring true and can literally guide us through hard times.  So, I am choosing to be defiant (the same way 2021 was) and incorporate them here the way I did when manoeuvring the shenanigans of  the past year.

As we step into 2022, we see that although she is presenting differently in some areas, she is similarly clad in her pandemic garbs, which she may be wearing for a long time to come.  Who knows?  She may very well give birth to another offspring.   So, we have the choice to either roll over and play dead or roll with the punches.  Either way, we are reminded that while we are responsible for our actions, we have very little control over when and how this upheaval will pan out and what will happen to the plans we have for ourselves.  Still, hope is not lost.  Despite what happened to, with and/or for us in 2021 (good or bad), I am sure that there was a cliché or two (or several) that served us well.  Based on the indicators of the year that was, we will not have a choice but to reach for those in our quest to navigate whatever awaits in 2022.  So let us put one foot in front of the other, and make lemonade out of lemons, and keep moving – one step at a time, regardless of what happens.

For those of us who often feel like we are not going to make it, we are still here, which means we did not give up, because we  have what it takes to navigate, come what may.  Plus, if we have learned anything from 2021, it is that tomorrow is not promised, so we must literally think outside of the box on the days that look bleak and be encouraged to continue to fight the good fight. 

Evidently, our survival depends on utilizing the cliché that works best for the surprises of 2022!