The first year of the new decade wasn’t what we had expected or envisioned.
So far the 2020s haven’t exactly been the Roaring ’20s, but that said, they certainly haven’t been the Boring ’20s, either. Perhaps a few too many hours of binge-watching in quarantine got tiresome at times, but a global pandemic does bring with it a kind of unpredictability.
A lot of events got cancelled that we were looking forward to, a lot of traditions were turned upside-down, but if those were the worst impacts we can recall, then we were probably the lucky ones. We know people suffered job losses, financial setbacks and saw their businesses fail. Family and partner relationships were stressed and snapped, mental health was tested. Some caught COVID-19 and were scared for their lives, some got sick, some died.
We hope that people won’t look back at 2020 as a lost year. If we lost a year, we’ve no one to blame but ourselves. COVID-19 cost us chances to create and cultivate personal connections, but in an online world, we have all manner of newfangled ways to interact, if we’re willing to make an effort. There are a million ways to learn and grow, pursue passions and pastimes.
As vaccines inject antibodies and hope in British Columbia and beyond, we can look forward to recovering, literally and figuratively, from COVID-19. We don’t know what the new normal will look like or when it will happen but we think the start of 2021 is as good a time as any to resolve for a better year, a better life, a better world.
Lockdowns and distancing will be with us at least a little bit longer and there will be more waiting and enduring. COVID is still very much a concern, but we can have some say in how much it takes from us.
Make a resolution, if you like, have a happy new year, and all the best in 2021.