Season Six
Episode 134
Three Things 2020 Taught me That I Didn't Want to Learn
Welcome to the Afternoon Ti Podcast! I’m your host Jessica Grant. This is the second super simplified podcast episode that gets to the good stuff right away. I’m focusing on simplifying what I can as I soak up time with family and finish out this crazy year. Last week I talked about the importance of rest and why it’s just as important as our work. In this episode I’m sharing what 2020 taught me that I didn’t want to learn: perseverance, waiting, and hope. And how these three things have prepared us for what’s ahead.
I love this definition of perseverance: It is persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. Isn’t this what we’ve done all of 2020? We didn’t know at times from one day to the next if we’d be teaching in-person or online. We didn’t know how many students might be in our classrooms compared to learning virtually until we showed up to teach that day. We didn’t know last spring if we’d be teaching online for a week or two weeks or a month. This fall we weren’t sure if we’d be returning to teach from inside the classroom or from home. We weren’t sure how successful we would be at pivoting from teaching as we’d always done in our classrooms to teaching through a screen using Zoom or Google Meets. We didn’t know how we’d figure out new technology tools or if they’d work or if the internet would support the work we needed to do. There was so much unknown. And there’s definitely unknown in this upcoming year. But we’ve done it. We’ve taken it moment by moment and day by day. It’s been hard. Sometimes so hard that tears flow and we feel completely and utterly unsuccessful. But no matter where you find yourself right now - you have persevered. You have done something despite the difficulty and the delay of seeing what you hoped for come to fruition.
No matter what next year throws at us, we are stronger than we were at the start of last year. Whether we feel like it or not. We’ve all learned more than we ever wanted to learn or thought we’d be able to learn. We’ve all created new ideas for teaching, new ideas for performing, new ideas for interacting and creating. This alone will make next year easier. We’ve already done a lot of hard things and we can face whatever comes our way next year with a little more confidence.
If 2020 has taught me anything it has been to focus on small moments of time and to not look too far ahead. This hasn’t always been easy for me - I love to look at where I’m headed and working towards goals that matter to me. I like to have plans that move me from day to week to month to year. This year I couldn’t do that. At times I couldn’t even tell you what was going to happen tomorrow which forced me to look at today and only today. There comes an uneasiness with not knowing what is coming. Not knowing how things will end. It meant that I’d work on something today. And then wait. I’d do more work later in the day. And then wait. Wait to see what my next step needed to be. Wait to see what changes were going to occur in terms of how I’d be teaching. Readjust, do what I can for the day, and then wait.
There was a lot of waiting this past year. We chose to move in the middle of the year - completely crazy. And we waited and prayed and waited and prayed some more as our home sat on the market. Six months later we’re in the final stage where we’re simply waiting for some work to be done on the home prior to our closing date in early February. This has been a hard wait. Hard perseverance. And hard to keep hoping that we’d made the right decision or that it would ever sell.
There was waiting through the ups and down of emotions. And all of us at home were feeling emotions differently. Some days I couldn’t even tell you why it was hard - it just was. Other days felt full of hope and possibility. Then an hour later I’d feel discouraged or uncertain as to whether I really knew how to handle my own kids’ needs at home or how exactly to plan for the next day when I wasn’t sure what that day was going to hold. Waiting. J.G. Holland, an American author and poet, said, “There is no great achievement that is not the result of patient working and waiting.” Whatever we have had to wait through this year or continue to wait for will produce great things. Better things even if it’s just that we’re more patient or able to simply live today without worrying about tomorrow. And while we wait, we hope.
I’m continuing to hope that one day I can sing in the classroom with my students again. I hope that the medical field continues to advance in finding new ways to fight the virus so that lives are saved. I hope that the closing of our home goes without much difficulty. I hope that my girls grow in compassion and kindness during the pandemic rather than fear and sadness. I hope that music education remains an important part of education in general. That we can perform live and in-person. I hope to see a Broadway show again! I hope that education conferences happen in-person again. I can’t wait to hug so many friends. And to see smiles and facial expressions when we no longer need to wear masks. There’s so much to hope for and it’s easy to get discouraged while we wait. Because we’ve had to wait a long time - 9 months. It’s been 9 months. And it all happened so fast from seemingly out of the blue.
This year has taught me to persevere and keep going one day at a time. Not looking too far ahead, but staying focused on the task in front of me. This year has taught me that things take longer than we expect and that waiting can produce hope or discouragement. While we wait, it’s helpful to keep our minds set on the possibilities of hope. While we persevere.
None of us know what is ahead in 2021, but we do know that we can persevere - we’ve done it already. We do know that there will be things that require waiting - we’ve had to work through that and it’s just part of life. We do know that there is hope and we just need to keep trusting that it will continue to get better.
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