New Year’s reflections: How catastrophes invite us to change and grow

Commentary

When I have the stamina to stay up late on New Year’s Eve, I like to watch the Times Square ball drop in New York. I’ve never been on-site for that festive event but watching and listening to the sounds that celebrate the changing of the calendar from one year to the next energize me. They make me hopeful about the changes that will occur in my life when a fresh, new year rings in.

What I didn’t realize until recently, however, is that the roots of the annual ball-dropping tradition go way back in time, actually before time.

Change has always had a sound. “In the beginning,” however you want to frame that term, a sound – a heated wind, an exploding wave, or a spoken word – started the change that resulted in something new: our universe. That theory, which some call the big bang, is often used to explain how the universe, along with everything in it, started, was birthed, evolved, developed, grew, progressed, advanced – you can pick your favorite word for change.

Change has been happening to things, meaning everything, since the beginning. And while these bangs and their accompanying changes often feel like loss, tragedy, heartbreak, or catastrophe, if we look for the good – how change moved the universe and human life forward – we might experience creations in the making. 

Longing for what was

My first dreams about the new year were for it to take me back to how life was before the catastrophe called COVID-19 happened. But catastrophes are not meant to take us backward but forward. They invite us to learn, to change, to grow, to be new creations.

I’ve changed over the past couple of years, willingly and unwillingly. I’ve learned that I can enjoy meeting with people virtually without saying one single time that I wish we were in person, even though I wish that. I’ve attended outstanding online presentations – most at no cost – that I could never have afforded to travel to, and they would never have been offered online if not for the disruptive impact of COVID-19.  

I’ve learned to discern fact from fiction while realizing that new data can change the facts and that the continuous upgrading of factual information is to be turned into active, real-time wisdom.

Catastrophes, disruptions of cataclysmic proportions, have occurred on our planet more times than we can count, and people have always tried to make sense of such happenings.

Folks who study the layers of our planet theorize that our earth was covered in water at least once and perhaps three times. People in more ancient times surmised these possibilities as well and told a story about a worldwide catastrophe called the flood. This flood narrative not only recognizes a catastrophe – or catastrophes – that took place at some time in our planet’s history, but also serves as a cautionary tale of personal choice run amok. It’s about people refusing the survival solution that was right before their eyes and instead taking the chance that they could tread water for 40 days and 40 nights in a torrential downpour. 

While tragic, that story ends with us still being here.

Over time, we’ve had to navigate our way through other catastrophes – world wars, global financial depressions, and diseases. We’ve done that as we’ve continually assessed and reassessed who and what to believe.

For the most part, ordinary, everyday folks have no voice in the bangs that get things started, but I’m learning that, by sounding like compassion, truth, and justice, I can offer my voice to changes that move the human story forward. Catastrophes, when analyzed truthfully and worked on cooperatively, have the potential to be converted, redeemed, and transformed. That’s a hope I bring to the new year.

Becoming a more human human being

Our universe has been around for roughly 14 billion years and has proven to be resilient, while ever changing and growing and moving. We humans – in our current iteration – have been on this planet for about 200,000 years. And despite the frequent catastrophes – both natural and those we inflict on each other by fighting over land, oil, and other stuff – we have, so far, been able to bounce back.

I’m curious, though, about the narratives we will write, and the lessons we will pass on to those who come after us. Will we provide life-giving wisdom that will help them manage their catastrophes?

Humanity’s interdependence is the lesson I’m taking away from our current catastrophe, and I hope to heighten an awareness of its importance. When catastrophes strike, I can’t focus on my well-being only; I also must care about the well-being of others, even if caring means personal inconvenience. And it goes without saying, that we don’t have to wait for a catastrophe to be concerned about the welfare of others.

Like every year before it, this new year will have its bangs – moments that will initially sound like loss, tragedy, heartbreak, or catastrophe. But on deeper listening and reflection, such events – if I choose to learn from them, to grow and change – can prove to be the very events that move me closer to being a more human human being. 

A critical task life asks of us is to be able to distinguish all the noise around us from the sounds that make for a good life – not only for ourselves, but also for our neighbors, whether that neighbor lives next door or on the other side of the world.

As we turn the page and enter a new year, my celebration is tempered by a humbling acknowledgment. We can’t have the past we long for or the future we dream about without more of us making sounds that ring in truth, safety, equity, and justice for the good of us all.