Today is the last day of 2020. It started with a pandemic and passed by leaving us with so many adversities. Many of us lost our family members, friends, jobs and whatnot and, struggled with mental stress. The students struggled with a huge loss of their studies. We have been bombarded with social media and 24/7 news cycle. The loss we faced has left us with deep-rooted wounds in our lives and probably would take a long time to heal as well.
Our immediate response to all the havoc has been “When things return to normal…” The thing is, now is the perfect time to redefine what ‘normal’ is because whatever we have gone through this year was a reminder by mother nature. There are a lot of messages we need to take on board, and there is a lot of insight that comes from this experience.
Firstly, there is newfound respect and kindness towards our health and well being. We’ve actually realized that “Health is wealth” and now we are doing away with the arrogance of thinking we are invincible and that nothing will happen to us. We’re realizing that we are fragile. So many things can happen in a blink of an eye. We must take better care of our health, physically, mentally and emotionally.
We realized that we have a huge responsibility in taking care of hygiene, in making sure that we stop spreading infections to other people in our communities and countries. Around the world, we have seen huge changes and improvements to the environment as we could see a clear sky in many places. This proves that we can fix climate change. Not only are we fragile but our ecosystem is fragile too. We also realized that we need to make wise decisions with our money. We actually realized that our family is everything to us and that love, faith, empathy and sympathy have far more values in our life than materialistic joy.
Do we really want something better for ourselves and our community? Now is the time to imagine a future that is kinder and more supportive of the sick, powerless, and the disenfranchised. Today’s ‘pause’ gives us time to think about exactly what we need in life. Adversity improves the way you think because the perspective you gain is honestly-earned. Our current crisis gives us an opportunity to know ourselves and connect with the essence of who we are. As some great soul said, a crisis is often an opportunity because it is the point at which we pivot and change our direction.
In a nutshell, 2020 should be remembered for one thing: change. So, on a positive note and with the lessons we learnt let’s say goodbye to this year and welcome 2021 with a better sense of human values.