A Way of Looking at 2020
We have a choice
2020 will probably go down as one of the darkest years on Earth. There have been worse. Two world wars and the Black Death come to mind, but for our contemporary age, 2020 was a year fraught with anxiety, isolation, division, and death.
However, “worst year ever,” is a subjective analysis. For some 2020 was truly their worst yet. For myself, 2016, the year my mother died, may have been the worst.
In the end, all these numbers and years are constructions. It is a bit of arrogance to think that God, nature, or the fates decided that 2020 would be the year of devastation as if such divinities would follow the calendar of man, with its arbitrary start and end date and monthly divisions. In reality, 2020 is nothing but a figment of our imagination. The pandemic is not over. Nor did it begin in 2020. The virus is following its own timeline. Nor was everything in 2020 tragic.
The tides of good and bad do not follow the patterns of our creation. In our ocean of experience, we get joy and heartbreak, sometimes clustered together, sometimes not. 2016 was also the year I started dating my future wife. Maybe it was the best year of my life.
I respect those who lost loved ones in 2020 or survived horrific ordeals. They will need time to grieve and, if necessary, to rage about a failing leadership and a callous populace who valued convenience and profit over life. No doubt many awful things happened in 2020.
But for myself, I shall move on and remember the good of 2020 and its lessons.
I choose to remember the walks I had with my dog while listening to music. The moment that I felt awe looking at the way sunlight hit the tips of a birch tree in winter while listening to the perfection of Joshua Bell.
I choose to remember getting lost in the short stories of Anton Chekhov. I now know Chekhov as a writer of great depth who looks without judgment at the foibles and beauty of our humanity. Even as I sheltered in place, I met so many personalities for but an instant.
I choose to remember my wife dressing up as an adorable alien on Halloween. I choose to remember the high school students who said, “Thank you, Mr. Willson,” after every Zoom class. I choose to remember my coworker who survived cancer in 2020 and all the men and women who prayed for her.
2020 was the year of the largest civil rights demonstration in history. 2020 elected the first female Vice-President in the United States, and a mostly conservative Supreme Court ruled that a person couldn’t be fired for being gay or transgender. The trajectory of history, even in 2020, continues toward more humanity and equality, despite its setbacks.
As I think about that tree in the sunlight, I think about what a great gift it is to be alive. Life has many imperfections, the worst of which is that it will all someday be over. All the more reason to appreciate what we can.
If we invent every year for ourselves, I see 2020 as the year of hope, in which out of the darkness we could see the light. After pandemics and wars, humanity tends to experience a time of advancement and peace.
I choose to see 2021 as a year of possibility. I invite you to do the same.
