Let this be the Year!
AT A NEW beginning and a with tough year behind us, now is the right time to consider making some changes. We have so much to look forward to this year. Vaccinations are starting to roll out, and that makes us raring to go plan for events later this year. Eventually, we’ll be meeting in person and hugging our friends and Mensa family members. With social distancing restrictions, we haven’t been able to provide regular testing to potential candidates; however, we are making progress now that Private Testing is available through Prometric. We’ve sold more than 400 vouchers for Private Testing since it started. This will help the organization as well as Local Groups that need proctors. Prometric has all the necessary safety procedures in place to provide testing. This will help bring more friends into our circle. Local Groups and Regions have had some wonderful Zoom/Skype/Discord events over the past year. I’m excited to see these continue for those members who are not able to make events in person as we slowly open up. The cleverness and unique ways of communicating and interacting with other members continue to grow. Please make sure you take a look at the calendar for online happenings. Visit us.mensa.org/calendar. We’ve learned a lot over the past year; we’ve seen a lot; we’ve suffered; we’ve grieved; we’ve joined together virtually; and through it all, we were still able to bring joy to our membership and keep them involved. That is an unbelievable and unmatchable lesson. I think Mensa is pretty awesome for that during all of this. We can still learn a lot from what happened, and that is the main message I wanted to share with you. Let this be the year: Of listening — listening harder and waiting to respond until after comprehending what we’ve heard; Of patience — spending time to make sure we under-stand someone else’s ideas and thoughts and making sure we allow them the space to make their ideas and desires known; Of truth — using more than one source for information and verifying it before repeating it; Of kindness — everyone needs a little kindness, especially random acts of kindness; and wear a mask, for others, if not for yourself; Of giving — giving from your heart, giving of your time, giving of your experience and knowledge. Let this be the year we are the better angels of our hearts. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you soon.