For the first time in many years, I woke up on New Year’s Day with bare fingernails and bare toenails–not a stroke of nail polish in sight. With the pandemic in full gloom, there was no hoopla surrounding a traditional household NYD gathering or unlike last year, the day wasn’t preceded with getting glammed up for a NYE masquerade ball. Today started bare and basic…
Well, isn’t that what Covid-19 and 2020 has done for us? It has stripped us down to the uncomfortable space of ‘bare’ and accepting life’s basics. It has made us more okay with the bare essentials; the bare necessities. It has given us all a much-needed break from the Flex-fluenza syndrome! Yes, for years, we’ve been ‘flexin’ everything, hiding behind masks of makeup, hairdos, nailcare designs, trendy clothes, social media and so many other things. Although it seemed so tragic in the beginning, I believe that we needed to get ‘bare’ to reveal who we really are. I believe that so much was taken away so we could finally get something— “It.” “It” being the “L” words, Life and Love.
In that baroness and stripped down version of us, we settled more into the nakedness of who we are. Flex-fluenza was in healing mode. Flexin’ became more limited each day. Perpetrating a fraud, as we used to say, was much more complex. It was a time to peel back the layers of our self-onion and reveal the core of who we are. It was a time to start being intentional about being authentic. No one really cared about the fluff anyway. Well, no one who truly mattered cared about it. Why were we trying so hard to be someone other than who we really are anyway? Why were we so caught up in the veil, the covering of the clear window to our being? We were on the wrong path! We weren’t free! We weren’t trying to get free…
Once again, thanks to an awe-amazing God, we get yet another worldwide calendar celebration to start anew. Cranking our engines to freshly begin 2021, we can’t pretend that 2020 didn’t exist, as wicked as it was in a multitude of ways. It was indeed a year of dramatic change. We lost so much, but hopefully we gained or gathered ourselves. Being “naked” made us look at us in that infamous mirror from a viewpoint we’d never seen. Prayerfully, in that look, we learned to function in the intentionality of being authentic in every way. Prayerfully, we now know that being our authentic self is the beginning journey on a path to freedom. It is only in that freedom that we, truthfully, start to “get right, so we don’t get left.” I’m tuning more into the Bare Essential, as I’m grateful that Authenticity is free—free to be me; free to grow; free to love; free to lose anything or anyone that/who doesn’t align with my desire to be a better human being.
I pray that 2021 brings us physical, emotional and spiritual healing–Living authentically with more love, more peace, more prayer, an abundance of blessings, and a more intimate relationship with God. We’ve waited for this year to rollover, and we’re ready! Happy New Year!
*Photo Cred — My friend and RAMily, Sharon E., Class of ’84
Peace and Blessings, Lisa B