20 things I’ve learnt on the long road to 2020
by Rose Collard
January is nearly over and as of today we’re skipping out of the EU (hooray!) To celebrate the former and commiserate the latter, I’ve charted everything I think I’ve learnt on the long road to 2020 – a small antidote, I hope, to the tidal-wave of New Year New Me gumph that has flooded the internet this month. It’s not much (20 is a surprisingly large number to get to when you’ve still not learnt how to fix your boiler without calling your dad, or that no matter how hard you try, a 50-minute commute will not take 45 if you ‘run’ the changes – not to mention what on earth a leasehold is) but here’s hoping they might just make you feel a bit better about how far you’ve come, too. Happy Brexit Day!
Vote. Exercise your democratic right whenever you get the opportunity. It's the most impactful thing you can do to change our society and if you don't, you can't moan about the shitty state of the country (and let's be honest, it's at least 90% of what we all talk about.) NB: voting for your favourite couple on Strictly most certainly does not count.
Greta Thunberg’s mantra might be ‘You're never too small to make a difference’, but I’d like to take that one step further: You're never too anything to make a difference. Short on time? Donate to a food bank, charity or other cause (the Australian and Amazon fires would be a good start). Short on money? Write to your MP, attend a protest (hell, start a protest), volunteer – or simply pick up some litter on your way home and help save the planet one water bottle at a time.
Therapy and exercise, if you are able to access them, are the only two things you will always, always feel better after doing. You might be filled with dread beforehand; you might quake in your boots; you might feel queasy. You might want to turn around and get back under the duvet. But I promise you, you will never regret taking those steps toward self-care.
Friendships are the most sacred thing in this world. Appreciate and cherish them. Never let them down. Heed the wise, perfect words of Nora Ephron who said in her (still beautifully relevant) 2006 essay ‘Things I Wish I’d Known’: ‘whenever someone says the words “Our friendship is more important than this,” watch out, because it almost never is.’ Should you find yourself as this most disgraceful someone - well, you clearly never saw a friendship there at all.
You will never (unless you are allergic, or simply don't like it) feel worse after drinking a cup of tea. You will more often than not, however, feel worse after drinking a cup of coffee. There is sadly no return from the jitter-making, anxiety-inducing, bowel-loosening catastrophe that is drinking too much coffee. There is, happily, no amount of tea that will make you yearn to start the day again because now you feel sick and you can't remember what you were doing and you have a headache that feels like there is a small animal, a hamster perhaps, trying to squeeze your brain out through your eye sockets. Drink tea.
Jealousy is an entirely natural, understandable and human emotion; one which we will all feel multiple times over the course of our lives. I think that if we could stop berating ourselves for feeling it, we’d learn to accept it and it would pass us by with increasing ease. Rather than fighting the jealousy, squashing it down as ‘ugly’ and ‘wrong’ – which, in my experience, has only ever served to maintain it and allow it to fester – hold it, feel it, and accept it. Don’t beat yourself up for it. Feelings are feelings and you have to let them be felt. Try to understand the reasons why you feel jealous, and tell yourself that it’s okay to feel that way. Give it some time and, hopefully, watch the jealousy float away.
Stand up for stuff. Whether it's calling out racism, asking your parents why they vote Tory (and so have the blood of thousands on their hands) or telling your boss it's actually not okay to expect you to work until 8pm every evening, try to stand up for what is right. Remember that time you didn’t call out your friend’s friend for making a homophobic slur in the pub? Well, the only thing that’s worse than swallowing your pride and telling him to fuck off is not swallowing your pride and telling him to fuck off.
No one looks good in long, striped socks or odd converse.* That being said, everyone looks good in fresh, white socks or a matching pair of converse. Go figure.
(*a fashion faux-pas from my youth, as you may have guessed)
Listen. But actually listen – to a friend, family member, podcast or stranger. Have no distractions and no agenda. Hear what they have to say. (On that note, podcasts can provide some of the best company, the most soothing respite, the most cheerful nonsense. There is nothing quite like the blissful, homecoming comfort of pressing play on your favourite podcast at the end of a long day.)
Representation is crucial and you should actively seek it out. Check out Instagram account Strong Black Lead, which posts weekly ‘New, Black and on Netflix’ carousels. Read The Gay Times, which is wholly dedicated to LGBTQ news and art. Support fringe theatre. Buy awesome twentieth-century books from Persephone, an all-female London bookshop. Get your opinion pieces from Gal-dem. Don’t just go and see all the Oscar nominated films. Listen to the Hot Goss and Homo Sapiens podcasts. Make all your birthday present purchases for 2020 subscriptions to Books That Matter. To name but a few.
Relationships are really, really fucking hard. Some are good. Some are bad. All can be valuable. I’ve heard that when you are with the right person it should be easy, like breathing, but have come to the conclusion that that’s bullshit. There is no one, right person for anyone, in the same way that there is no one, right way to be. Life is never easy, so why expect the unexpected for a relationship? A much wiser person than me once told me there are two ‘versions’ of your relationship. One is you and your partner in a room with no distractions – just each other. The other version is the two of you together, but with every piece of life’s context thrown at you. Unfortunately, no matter how perfect your isolated room might be, it’s that second version you have to be able to live with.
Contrary to (my own) belief, actually #NotAllMen are pieces of shit. But they all could learn to step aside once in a while and let someone else take the reins. If this isn’t happening in whatever situation you may find yourself in, politely ask the ‘men’ if they’ve ever considered another point of view, and then hit them with some stats on the benefits of having diverse voices. (Try: there are fewer CEOs who are women than there are men in leaderships roles named David; racially diverse teams outperform non-diverse teams by 35%; 57% of employees think their companies should be more diverse; teams where men and women are equal earn 41% more revenue.)
Trans rights are human rights and J.K. Rowling can go Avada Kedavra herself if she thinks otherwise.
That being said, the conundrum posed by denouncing J.K. because she is a TERF is a tough one. The issue of whether or not art and the author can be – or should be – separated has been much debated, and I don’t believe I can offer further enlightenment to what is an already cohesive discussion. What I will say, however, is that it’s definitely acceptable for the issue to be a difficult one. Finding out the creator of something you love is morally reprehensible feels as though you are, by dint of loving their creation, engaging in or at the very least condoning said reprehensibility. Even though you don’t share those views, their wrongdoing feels personal – and, really, it should. You should feel the sting of their immorality because if you didn’t, it would mean you didn’t care. It doesn’t mean, however, that you must denounce their life’s work should that work mean something to you. You can condemn J.K. Rowling for being a TERF, yet the Harry Potter series can still be meaningful for you – if, I should add, that is how you choose to view it. I don’t for a minute want to suggest you should continue to love Harry Potter if your views on J.K. Rowling innately change how you view her work. All I am saying is that, if you still want to, you can still love it. And also do what you can to condemn her views and fight for what is right. In short, both truths – “J.K. Rowling is wrong” and “I love Harry Potter” – can exist.
Support your local independents. Be that coffee shops, supermarkets, cinemas or charities. (Hey, we’re Brexit Britain now, so let’s keep it in the family.)
Hierarchy, in its multiplicitous forms, is just an antiquated excuse for a few dickheads to behave like, well, dickheads. It would be highly useful, I believe, for those dickheads to remember the following:
Getting a first in your degree doesn’t make you smarter than someone who hasn’t been to university.
Knowing something someone else doesn’t doesn’t make you better than that someone: it just means you know something they don’t. And the thing is, most of the time your ability to have that knowledge has come from your own privilege. Perhaps that fact would be more worth knowing.
Giving up meat doesn’t always give you the right to moonlight as an eco-warrior.
Being a straight, white, middle-class, hetero, cis man doesn’t mean you automatically know more about politics than anyone else in the room (shocking, I know).
Being a CEO doesn’t mean you can’t clear up your own dirty mug at the end of the day.
Memes might make you chuckle, but never, ever overlook the power of the written word.
Grief seems to only strike more often, and harder, as you get older. It is something I wonder I will ever understand. It has, at times, felt to me a bit like a song, playing over and over again in the background, except each time you listen you hear a new chord or a new tone. Though you can never turn the song off, sometimes it’s so quiet you think you can barely hear it. Sometimes it’s so loud it deafens. It is strangely companionable, yet slowly draining. It doesn’t go away but it does, somehow, over time, get a little more bearable.
Music has the unique ability to unleash emotion in ways I’ve never known before, from crippling, corporeal sobs to swelling, gravity-defying joy. It is poetry, it is beauty and it is human.
Be kind to others – but also to yourself. Give yourself a break, regularly. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Every once in a while, remember it’s okay to put yourself first. Every once in a while, remember it’s also okay to put others first. Everyone has a different situation, background, experience and agenda. Remember that this is something to be cherished, marvelled at, and above all, appreciated.
So yes it’s been a long old road to 2020, but hopefully there’s been some good bits on the way. Hang on in there – it may be only 337 days until the Brexit transition period ends, but you’ve got 3,622 days until we see this new decade out. Do with it whatever the hell you want.
Title image by Laura Muller, a graphic designer and illustrator living in Toulouse, France.
