Welcome to 2021—you’ve survived an eventful year of sorrow, pain and anxiety. Here we are into a new lease on life as you’ve just stepped out of your comfort zone. You might still wonder what are the symptoms for feeling no longer in your comfort zone. I did a brainstorming and came up with these words. If you are in the opposite situations of being secure, comfortable, predictable and in control; or if you often feel anxious, angry, worried, disappointed and painful, congratulations—you’re no longer in your comfort zone.
In fact, no one is an exception for leaving their comfort zones after 2020. Children as young as toddlers had their shared memory of the days in 2020 without playmates close by, teachers in a vacant classroom, and summer camps set in the wild and wonderful Mother Nature.
Office workers across all age groups had their futuristic, insulator-like encounter with their clients, families and friends through screens and texting. All those familiar faces and the strange ones crisscrossed on the screens of various sizes like tens of thousands of fireflies at night illuminating our unlit mind. This is how I frame my surreal memory of 2020—I don’t know you in person but I feel as if we’re as close as at an arm’s length by locking our eyes on the screen. I feel your voice is familiar even though you don’t know me, as if a mother is whispering to her child at bedtime when I listen to your podcasts. I’m adapting to a new comfort zone since 2020.
Teleconferencing and its technological advancement will stay with us in this new year and beyond. Elderly, especially those who live alone or in senior homes, were forced to adapt to a no-contact world of communication last year, ranging from doctor’s appointments and family visits to moviegoing and book club gatherings. Like the indigenous people and impoverished, unsung heroes from all walks of life, seniors and medical professionals also faced an unprecedentedly challenging year that their gut feelings and expertise were no longer sufficient to handle the risks—and perhaps danger too—that were hidden outside their comfort zones.
The global public crisis has left no one behind—we are all out of our comfort zones now.
One of my favorite books since I was a youngster is titled Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. It has a beautiful description about how a majority of us choose to stay in our comfort zones. And yet the Year of Pandemic has pushes us willy-nilly to rethink and reimagine the meaning of living in the years ahead. It reads:
“A white rabbit is pulled out of a top hat. Because it is an extremely large rabbit, the trick takes many billions of years. All mortals are born at the very tip of the rabbit’s fine hairs where they are in a position to wonder at the impossibility of the trick. But as they grow older they work themselves even deeper into the fur. And there they stay. They become so comfortable they never risk crawling back up the fragile hairs again. Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of the fall off, but other cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.”
I’ve read this excerpt many times and it still makes my heart race. As we are in 2021, we’re in the New Age of Aquarius. An astrological “age” shifts about every 2,150 years when the Earth’s rotation moves into a new zodiac sign around the spring equinox. Considering the massive transits that happened in the pandemic-laden 2020, astrologers around the world have believed the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction on the winter solstice last year (December 21, 2020) and several celestial bodies move into Aquarius in February of 2021 herald the arrival of the Age of Aquarius. I will explain later what the Jupiter-Saturn Great Conjunction is. We are truly leaving the Age of Pisces which shaped many belief systems.
Whether or not you believe in astrology, Aquarians are often identified by their unconventional ideas and nonconformist attitude. The sign of Aquarius is forward-looking and growth-oriented and it seeks knowledge, equality and individual freedom to all. So, as we have left our comfort zones propelled by COVID-19, facing the aftermath of trauma and depression in the largest scale in contemporary history, we are likely to experience more purging, and an ongoing conflict between the old and the new, marked by the blending different energies from the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius. Superstitiously, I wonder if the brownout in Guangzhou China on the winter solstice was related to the astrological spectacle about the Great Conjunction.
Astrologically speaking, the 2020 Jupiter-Saturn meetup is especially important since it serves as a bridge to Pluto’s entrance into Aquarius in 2024. Pluto will spend twenty years in Aquarius. Pluto is the sign of transformation and Aquarius is a sign of progress. So it is believed that the combined energies of Aquarius and Pluto will advance humanity incredibly on a global scale.
Looking back, the crises we experienced last year and a plethora of broken systems on which the pandemic has turned a spotlight, at which we would normally keep a blind eye, have somewhat shattered the foundation of our comfort zones, haven’t they?
Never should we forget what we fought for in 2020. A systemic problem requires a systemic change by systems leadership and empathy. If you’d like to refresh the purpose of living in a new normal in 2021 and beyond, or better, if you’d rather create your brand new comfort zone in the danger space than living defensively and in denial, you may tune in David Lammy’s outspoken public statement about why climate justice can’t happen without racial justice. As one of the young leaders in the British Parliament, MP Lammy’s viewpoint resonates with my belief that climate policy is the 21st century diplomacy. And the U.S.-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in this century.
Last month, I was strongly drawn to astrology as if my cognition was suddenly awakened by a gravitational pull from the constellations and the Greek mythology behind them. Serendipitously, I was in the right moment to learn about an astrological spectacle. Jupiter and Saturn met on the winter solstice last year, launching a rare sky show of Great Conjunction 2020.
Astronomers call a close planetary pairing a conjunction. Jupiter-Saturn pairings occur about once every 20 years. Appearing just one-tenth of a degree apart, or about the thickness of a dime held at arm’s length, the two bright planets appeared closer together than at any time in the past 400 years and nearly 800 years since the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn occurred at night. 400 years? How many lifetimes are there for a mortal like me to live through before I can observe such an astral miracle? Am I blessed that I did it in this lifetime? Is it a homecoming present in the Age of Aquarius? Eventually, I will become a stardust returning to the embrace of the universe.
Jupiter and Saturn last lined up as closely as this was in 1623, roughly a dozen years after Galileo first aimed a telescope at the night sky and discovered Jupiter’s four largest moons. Because of their rarity of closeness in 2020, the spectacle was referred to as “Great Conjunction.” The next comparably close conjunction will be in 2080. I’ll be most likely a stardust by then. The video from the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, recorded the entire Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21, 2020. I hope you have a blast with the recorded spectacle and the beautiful accompanied music.
With the help of the internet, people around the world, not only in the United States, but from Brill, England and Kuwait City, Kuwait to Koh Chang, Thailand and Guatemala, also posted their images of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Check out here. This is where I should cut down hundreds of ten-thousand words where pictures speak louder than words.
Let us relive the golden rule in the U.S. Declaration of Independence—Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. A new comfort zone is to be created and ameliorated from now on. Perhaps our life will be less turbulent and troubled if we believe what Democritus said that happiness dwells in the soul.
In the fast-paced, and maybe arbitrary, information age, only the nature of humanity and the reflection of our souls will remain distinct and definite. Leaving the old comfort zone only signifies that a majority of us have to discover and create a new one that will give them “the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink.”
2021 will be a very different year ahead for you and me.
“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.” —Democritus
