Lessons and Questions from 2017

JANUARY 2018

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by Sara Onitsuka
AFO Staff

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More than Christmas or any other holiday, New Year’s has always held a special significance for my family and me. Having grown up with Japanese culture and traditions, I see New Year’s as a chance to both honor the passing year and welcome in the new one. A reminder to pause, reflect on, and evaluate your life.

I leave behind 2017, a year of both growth and unexpected turmoil, with complicated feelings. Post-college adulthood is coming up on me quick (I graduate this May), and luckily I do feel as though I greatly matured in 2017, and learned some valuable, grounding, and occasionally harsh lessons. Although I’ve learned so much, I still start 2018 with more questions than answers. It feels like some of these questions  are dangling right above my head like ripe fruit, as if I could reach their answer if I stretched a little further. Others may be questions I will ask myself again and again through life.

Through reflecting on the old year and looking forward to the new one, I have gathered a list of some lessons and questions. Perhaps I can make this a yearly ritual - not just thinking about these things, but writing them down to look over again the next year and years to come. I hope you can gain something from the thoughts I am sharing as well, even if my exact life situations don’t apply to you.

So here is my list of things I learned in 2017 and things I still haven't been able to answer.

Lessons

• Although we are constantly transforming and changing as individuals, I cannot craft my identity around what other people say I am. I need to accept that there are some unchanging rough and smooth parts of me, and understand the foundation of who I am. In a similar vein, criticism of my character should certainly make me question myself, maybe even shake me, but should not destroy me.
  
• I need to understand and acknowledge the power of love from friends, and to reach out when I need help. Though I like to think I am independent and that I can solve my problems on my own, I do not have to go it alone, stuck in a spiral of my own thoughts. I have relied on friends in the past, but this year I am certain that they saved me.
  
• The feeling of being loved and protected doesn’t need to come from a significant other, or even an outside source. I have been subconsciously looking for this all my life. If I think it’s going to come entirely from the outside, I am going to be searching forever.
  
• I am not weak just because I am small. I should not further diminish myself. I am shrinking myself with my own words. I have many forms of strength, and I can build physical strength if I want to.
  
• Life is always in a constant state of transition. There are clearly periods of life where we go through more changes than others - this year will be a tremendous year of change for me as I graduate college and leave the community I’ve lived in for four years - but I am beginning to realize that I need to get used to instability. As a kid, I had this idea that eventually I would just figure out life and I’d settle into it. But the older I get, the more I realize no one really has it figured out.
  
• Anger is necessary and valid, but it is not sustainable for me long-term. I have been angry a lot over the past year, especially in regards to healing from sexual trauma. I have had every right to feel and hurt intensely, but when I am angry for an extended amount of time, I can almost feel it eating away at my energy. Especially if I am to continue activist work, I need to try to shift my main motivation away from anger to prevent burnout.
  
• Our capacity to be productive changes day to day. Just because I was productive one day, doesn’t mean I should beat myself up for not being productive the next day. If anything, I should be more kind to myself, having worked hard already, instead of having the same expectation.
  

Questions

• Does the amount of love I have for others have a limit, or is it endless? (Sometimes it feels endless, but I also do not want to overextend myself)
  
• Why doesn’t society treat platonic love with as much seriousness and weight as romantic love? It is not as if friendship breakups do not hurt, or as if friends cannot give you love, support, and validation.
  
• I keep longing for revolutionary love, but what exactly do I mean by that? What are the parameters that I seek? Will I ever find it?
  
• What role does compassion play in the movement, and how do we talk about compassion in a revolutionary and radical way without invalidating the anger and trauma of oppressed folks (the way many white liberals do)?
  
• How much has my trauma shaped me and all of my intersecting identities? How will it continue to? How much of this can I determine/is under my control?
  
• Who am I without, or outside of, said trauma? Can they ever be separated?
  
• What parts of myself am I still hesitant to show/not showing others?
  
• What will it look like if I allow the world the see all of my vulnerabilities? Is that when I will be at my strongest?