Bridgewater, Va. – It is the season of new beginnings and they seem to be all around us. A brand new year, the start of a new semester and the inauguration of a new president to name a few. 

Welcoming new beginnings for their potential to be ripe with possibilities is a refreshing season each year, but this year I find myself grateful for new beginnings like never before. Grateful that new beginnings provide the opportunity to foster resiliency. 

I believe that we humans are a resilient bunch and 2020 has done nothing but confirm that belief. 2020 was quite the setback to say the least, but people everywhere adapted, bounced back and kept going. 

Over the summer, I was on a backpacking trip in the George Washington National Forest. After a long day of hiking with a heavy backpack under the hot July sun, my group members and I were feeling the effects. We set up camp for the night tucked in a small valley between the mountains and got the rest we needed. 

The next morning, our trip leader said something that has stuck with me these last several months. She said it’s amazing how we wake up in the morning ready for a new day, despite what we have done the day before.  

The day before, or even the entire year before, we could have hiked up a mountain with twenty five pounds on our back — physically or metaphorically — and woke up today ready to summit the next mountain. 

I think that for us all, most of 2020 has felt like climbing a mountain with weight sitting on our shoulders. Yet, here we are today — resilient. 

After the year we have had, we could call that mountain COVID-19, political unrest, environmental crisis, grief, economic uncertainties and the list goes on. Whatever that mountain is, with the gift of a new beginning we can choose to wake up ready to keep climbing and ready to dig deep into our resiliency. 

A lesson I have learned recently is that I cannot control what is happening around me or how others are reacting around me. What I can control is how I handle the situation and how I react to what is occurring. 

It is up to us to determine what we will do with the new beginning we have been given. I for one, plan to welcome and embrace the opportunity for new beginnings, and I hope that you will do the same.