Muddling Through

Several weeks ago, Facebook shared a memory with me of a trip to Budapest. It was in 2019, just before Christmas, just before the world changed forever. I was supposed to be there for work Monday and flying home Friday, just in time to attend an annual Christmas concert that I hadn't missed in 8 years, as well as a weekend away for a friend's birthday. Long story short, the first flight was delayed, the client was angry, the seller was angry, and while I managed to turn the client experience around once I got there, it was a cold week away and I missed all the good stuff back home.

I share this story with you because the memory that Facebook shared with me doesn’t highlight any of that. The memory is from a few pictures where I managed to get a couple nice hours walking through the Budapest Christmas Markets. The whole week I worked very hard, I was exhausted, and I was desperately homesick but the rose-tinted memory makes it easy to forget that I was just trying to make the most of the situation I had.

While I was reminiscing and thinking about how we trick ourselves into remembering the grass of the past as greener than it was, the song Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas came on. In this song, you may or may not be familiar with the fact that the lyrics were changed. What I didn't realize until writing this post, was that they changed more than once. The original tune was too depressing for Judy Garland who insisted on making it merrier, then once again Frank Sinatra demanded that they "jolly up" one of the lines for his "Jolly Christmas" album.

As we enter a third year of a global pandemic, it's easy to look back on life before 2020 and remember everything as better. It's also easy to want to "jolly up" our situation now with a better filter and a highlight reel while ignoring the complicated mess of it all. While I appreciate the attitude of trying to spot the silver lining and finding the good in any situation, I hope it's not at the expense of acknowledging that a silver lining comes with a very dark cloud.  A very dark cloud that we need to feel and work through if we ever want to enjoy the silver.

I personally love the original line "we'll have to muddle through somehow" because at the end of the day I think that's what all of us are doing. And let's not ignore what to me is the most powerful word in the song: we'll. We'll have to muddle through… Not I'll muddle through. We'll muddle through. So as you look to this year and maybe start to set resolutions for yourself or have dreams of what you may accomplish in 2022, remember that I am here muddling right along with you. Life isn't perfect, it never will be, and so finding joy in it doesn't come from covering the pain with a shining star. It comes from keeping the hope that next year will be better and celebrating the fact that we managed to muddle through with a few smiles.