I wanted to give myself a pat on the back for writing my hundredth weekly post, but took a little while to think about how to mark the occasion. Naturally, a recent binge of mine, the CW show The 100, came to mind. As you can tell from the screenshot (above) of a Google search for the show, it's not my usual genre. I started watching it because my younger daughter said she liked it and thought I would, too. There's not a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of shows we both like, but when she recommends one to me, she's always correct. I kept watching it because I got hooked.
For those of you who haven't seen the show, it's set way in the future. Humans have been living in space for years since earth became uninhabitable. When their spaceship's air is running out, the authorities decide to send one hundred teenagers down to earth to see if they can survive. In the show's many seasons, more happens on Earth and on other planets, and the story follows a few of those original characters.
They survive a lot of bad stuff, through luck, violence, ingenuity, creativity, good choices and bad ones, working together and competing against each other, falling apart, knowing when to pivot, and always pulling themselves back up to try again. Their obstacles are more dramatic than most of ours, but the lessons are the same.
I've said a few times that I believe 2020 has had a few silver linings. (That doesn't mean that much of the year wasn't a VERY dark cloud.) My greatest two silver linings from the events of the year are reminders to (1) stay ready for the pivot and pull myself up when I fall, and (2) feel gratitude for what goes right because life doesn't offer guarantees that chips will continue to fall my way.
These two lessons matter everyday, so I hope they will continue to guide me as we come out of this pandemic, and I do plan to come out of this scary time in one piece. (Wear a mask, people, and I say this with love and respect for the band, please don't stand so close to me!) When everything goes well, being ready for a pivot can take us from good to great and feeling gratitude can boost our enjoyment of what's working. There's no downside to these two messages.
What are your top two lessons from 2020? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Lessons from 2020:
-Good enough can be perfect
-I always knew that family and friends are everything, but family and friends are everything.
Fun Fact: The author of the book series The 100 is a children’s book editor at Scholastic. She is awesome, and she writes the series under a pen name.
Dear TvS,
I love these two lessons and did not know about the Scholastic author. Super cool!