Wild World

Mango dress
Mango boots
Location: The Fort Garry Hotel – Winnipeg, Manitoba

“…you can make it as big or as small as you want.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald

The world felt small, in 2020. At times, it was almost as if it were shrinking around me, closing me in. It didn’t start that way. While I didn’t welcome the new year with particular optimism, I expected it would be much like the old one. “I suspect,” I said, “that my story this year will be much the same as it was last year – work, travel and, well, more work.” 

Words cannot convey how dismayed I still am at having been so wrong.

I remember waking up early on our last day in Chicago, a trip we took not knowing it would be our last for the year… maybe for longer. We got dressed and ready in our Gold Coast hotel room, then took a walk down the street to Cafe Colombe. On Monday morning, the streets were quiet – most people were on their way to work, and we could have been, too. It just felt so normal – to be in out in the world, wandering streets that were just beginning to feel familiar. I’ve clung to that memory in the past ten months; the feeling of damp in the air after days of unseasonable sun and warmth, the sound of my heels on the sidewalk, the warmth of the paper cup in my hand. I didn’t know it that morning, because I’d never lived without it, but that was freedom.

My world was big, back then – I’d made it that way. And while that hasn’t really changed, my access to it temporarily suspended. Freedom, which we were once so spoiled with that we took it entirely for granted, is conspicuous by its absence. The furthest we’ve travelled since last February is to the Fort Garry Hotel, a ten minute drive from home. Even that feels like a luxury. When I reflect on the person I was a year ago, I can only think about how lucky she was to be so lucky and not to know it.

Maybe I needed to learn the lessons that 2020 came to teach us. Maybe the intimate familiarity I’ve developed with every wall and corner of my apartment was necessary to my personal growth. But I don’t know. It’s easy to look for meaning in emotionally trying situations but difficult to be sure if you’ve actually found it, or if you’re simply assigning meaning to cosmic accidents for the sake of your own sanity. 2020 happened to me, but it happened to everyone else in the world, too – the events weren’t about me. I’m not truly convinced there was much meaning in them beyond what we choose to assign ourselves.

The meaning I’ve chosen is a simple one. I was privileged, incredibly so, and only casually aware of it. My lack of understanding of my own circumstances meant that I didn’t appreciate them or celebrate them in the way they deserved. In my place, someone else would have been jumping for joy at every new opportunity for adventure. I took those opportunities as a matter of course, nothing more. It’s a mistake I know now that I will never repeat.

I am cautiously optimistic about 2021. It’s a wild world we live in, and there are no guarantees. All I know for sure that I will be different. More grateful. More present. And most importantly, much more inclined to celebrate every little thing, every success, every freedom, every adventure, that I am fortunate enough to be granted.

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