There’s a vision board above my desk, with my hopes, wishes and desires for the year 2020. When I made it I was full of enthusiasm for a new year, and had several conversations with friends about what an amazing year it was going to be.

Everyone felt it … there was something in the air … somehow 2020 felt “different” from the start. The possibilities were endless.

It’s different, alright.

Early April, I considered taking my vision board off the wall, knowing the year I expected and hoped for was not in the cards. No graduation trips, no girls weekend in the spring with my three girls, no wedding shower for my oldest and her fiance, maybe even no big wedding in the fall. My excitement for 2020 was replaced with sadness and loss.

Then I took a closer look, and realized the only thing that changed was the “hows.”

In the vision board workshop I hosted in January, we discussed the key element of envisioning, then manifesting, the life you truly desire; it’s letting go of “how” your desires will manifest, and let the Universe and its brilliant serendipity figure that out.

Our job, instead of planning each how along the way, is to set the intention for our desires, let it go, then take whatever inspired action moves into our awareness. This goes for the physical things we want, as well as the spiritual and emotional.

This is hard enough to do in a “normal” year. We have a set understanding of “how” things are supposed to happen. You want a new job? You update your resume, scour the job sites, ask your network. Reasonable — yet what if you took that intention of finding a new job with you wherever you went, even to the Farmer’s Market, say, where you meet someone and strike up a conversation that leads to a mention of someone looking for your exact skill set?

Never in a million years would you have put “Go to Farmer’s Market” on your to-do list for finding a job … yet how often does this kind of serendipity happen?

So back to my vision board — I was someone convinced that my vision for the year was totally upended by the pandemic. Then I took a closer look …

• closer connection with my husband? That was certainly happening.
• more connection with family? My daughters and I are closer than ever, never hesitating to jump on FaceTime when we need to an extra dose of love, and keeping up a daily stream of texts; our extended family has Zoom chats every Saturday night.
• the guest room redecorated and ready for company? Just about complete, including a new paint-by-number done as “stress therapy”
• more faith? Faith has been my touchstone during the last few months, in a way I’ve never felt it before.
• a clean and organized home? Well, the year’s not over yet …

It’s been an astonishing thing to learn these lessons. Even with my surface level awareness of letting go of the hows, the reality comes as a shock. I would never wish for the situation the world is facing today … yet I realize it doesn’t spell the end of our dreaming, our desires for ourselves and the ones we love.

Maybe this is what my grandmother said when she always searched for silver linings in her challenging life. She wasn’t in denial; she simply had faith.

I’ve learnt it is entirely possibly to be grateful and sad at the same time; happy and sorrowful; strong at heart yet anxious; looking forward to the future while struggling with the present.

It is entirely possible that I just may get the year I envisioned after all …