It’s roughly two hours until we bid this bitch of a year farewell.
Being what it was, no recap is necessary. It would be, I feel, an insult to reiterate the obvious plights we’ve witnessed either from afar or first hand.
So I won’t do such a thing. We need a break. And while everyone knows the world won’t magically reset at midnight, each of us, in some fashion, are anticipating the most pervasive form of relief.
Just ten days ago, a number of us (us being Black folk who follow the cultural waves of social media) found ourselves with this same level of anticipation. This time, we had our eyes set on a rare astronomical event, a planetary alignment that occurred nearly 400 years ago, though not visible since another 400 years before then. “The Great Conjunction”, we claimed for ourselves as the night we would experience a collective provocation of our superpowers.
And while all in child-like awe and distraction, it was undeniable that we needed a Negro Solstice… a hope that the magic we’ve long professed to hold would ultimately transform us, elevate us above the familiar woes, tragedies and transgressions that have paled us for just as long as it’s taken us to see these planets consort again. We wished upon Jupiter and Saturn for something far grander than stimulus checks, fund reallocations or reparations. We hoped to become super humans.
But shit didn’t happen.
Or did it?
While none of us mutated with x-ray vision, lightening speed or the strength to bend steel with our bare hands (yet), our powers have surely been activated.
Never in my lifetime have I experienced the level of resilience, ingenuity and connectedness that the past year has incited, not only within us as a people but within myself, as well. In the face of the villains 2020 sent for us, we overcame, not by the might of powers granted one winter night. We withstood with the power we had all along, power we inherited from our ancestors. Binding the bullshit and manifesting a brighter tomorrow, we, on this last day of the year, are indeed heroes. We are beacons to the next generations for having merely made it through the murk of the last twelve months, tapping into unified wonderment, conjunction or not, to reveal our true natures… who we really are.
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You are powerful.
Even if it is hard to believe at times, you are. It is within your divine design. It is that power that has gotten you to this very moment, nearing the countdown into a new year. No, 2020 may have not been quite how you planned, but you found your way. It may not have quite ended how you wanted, but here you are at the finish line. Many did not make it this far. For those of us who did, it is impossible to leave this year quite the same as we entered it.
So, walk into 2021 with the same energy. In the same power that carried you through. In gratitude for lessons learned. In expectancy of more than you could imagine.
Enter this next year, not quite as expected, but certain that you will be good.
Cheers to the new year.