I know, everyone is looking back at the past year and lamenting about COVID-19 and all the other horrors visited upon us by 2020. Hopefully I won’t do that. And hopefully I won’t come off as humble-bragging, either. I can’t really take much credit for anything over the past year, good or bad.
It just seems strange to me that just over a year ago I was so optimistic about what was to come. Yes, I was a little concerned when they announced at work that we would all be working from home for the next couple of weeks while we flattened the curve. That didn’t seem overly traumatic. I didn’t particularly want to work from home, but I could make it work for a few weeks.
Now, over a year later, my state is finally getting our number of new cases back down around where it was this time last year. I remember back when 175 new cases in one day was a terrible development, not something to heave a sigh of relief over. But really, I’d have to say it’s all be merely inconvenient for my family and me. We’ve been quite fortunate, and I feel somewhat as though I should feel guilty about that.
None of us lost our jobs, not even my teenage son working at a restaurant. None of us got sick, though one son was quarantined twice. Our children were able to continue with school with some adjustment, but their educational path wasn’t interrupted or sidetracked for long. Our church adapted and, while I’ve missed seeing everyone, we still get our regular weekly worship. We survived the major shortages and continue to roll with the punches as the unexpected rolling shortages that have raised their occasional heads.
Some of our sons’ sports events were canceled, but not for long. My oldest son was even able to get his Senior Prom experience. Some of our travel plans were put on hold–and remain so. We’re fortunate enough to live in a state that was able to strike a reasonable balance between caution and function. That’s easy for me to say, of course, but then I never bought into the whole “if it saves one life” mentality that led some states to implement much stricter policies that don’t seem to have helped that much more.
And that leads us to the one thing that has made this past year seem at all difficult: the constant fighting. Thanks to the ubiquity of social media we were all in each other’s faces the entire year–probably a lot more than we would have otherwise. A presidential election didn’t help with that in the slightest. A lot of frustrations from the year boiled over, with a lot of people looking to take it out on one another. Once the dust settled and a new president took office there were the usual calls for unity and coming together, but as I feared, the promise to be the president of all Americans didn’t survive the next news cycle. It became clear that “unity” was just another word for “just stop resisting us.” For both sides. Nothing has changed politically. The moment of goodwill, if there was one, was squandered.
In spite of all that, I remain optimistic. The trick is to live where you are. Where I live my neighbors are all good people. People still engage in small kindnesses to one another and, to the best of my knowledge, don’t agonize over who their benefactor may have voted for. In fact, most people I talk to don’t even talk about politics. I don’t know why we are so different online, but in person people still seem to observe the old maxim of not discussing politics or religion (or the Great Pumpkin).
I’ve given up on life making sense at the national level. After all, we’re encouraged to get the vaccine (which I have, both rounds), and yet we’re told that the vaccinated still have to observe all the precautions as the unvaccinated. If nothing changes, why bother with the vaccine, I have to wonder. But that is neither here nor there. The more I define my life by what I don’t have, can’t do, or don’t approve of, the less happy I’m likely to be.
The truth we all live with, but try to ignore, is that everything could be taken from us in an instant. An unusually large rock that NASA didn’t spot in time could wipe us all out much more quickly than anyone’s politics could. We could survive the worst that COVID could throw at us and still die crossing the street. Just because the past year has emphasized the fragility of life doesn’t mean “normal” life hasn’t been nearly as tenuous all along. Heck, my cats have been trying to kill me for years. During the past year I underwent open heart surgery with a much higher chance of death than of my dying from COVID.
The point is there is plenty in life that will distract us from living if we let us. There’s plenty in politics that will divide us when we don’t need to be divided. There’s far more to worry about than we have time to worry over. Better to enjoy life–and each other–while we can. Better to stop waiting for the government to solve all our problems and just go out and do something to make someone’s life a little easier. Better to step outside, take a deep breath, and look around for some unexpected beauty. It’s there to be found.
We have no way of knowing what the next year will bring. Why wait to find out? Why let life just happen to us? Let’s go out and make life on our terms.