Happy New Year’s Eve! It’s the last day of 2020 and we don’t know anyone who isn’t ready to kick this year to the curb. And because 2020 is 2020, we’re forgoing our usual New Year’s Eve celebrations so we can’t exactly send the year out with a bang. But we can still stay up to watch the ball drop or the clock strike midnight and breathe a sigh of relief that this horrendous year is finally over.
Tomorrow’s dawn won’t magically wipe away all our problems; but 2021 brings hope for an eventual return to normal. We’ll have a new administration at the helm, vaccines being distributed to broader swaths of people every day and the hard-fought wisdom of the past year. It won’t be all sunshine and rainbows, but at least we can see a glimmer of light through the dark clouds.
2020: The year of a global pandemic, a racial reckoning and a fiercely contested election. If we listed all the individual bad things that happened, we wouldn’t have space left in the newspaper for anything else. Instead, we’d like to take a look at the silver lining. Because 2020 was also the year when all the white noise of our lives got quieter and we were able to see and hear things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. 2020 was the year we started paying attention.
As SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, swept across the globe, we saw firsthand and in real time how the world handles a crisis. And we saw, perhaps for the first time, how the most menial of professions are essential to a functioning society.
We always knew medical professionals were important; their work saves lives on a daily basis, but they became true superheroes as the pandemic took hold. However, we had taken for granted the vital work done by store associates, maintenance and cleaning crews, kitchen staff and delivery/truck drivers, among so many others.
This was also the year we saw the cracks in our societal foundation. We saw how health care had become a privilege when it should be a right. We saw how fragile our social safety nets are when a short lockdown collapsed our economy and put so many families on the brink of complete ruin. Then we stepped up to help each other.
This was also the year we faced racism and police brutality straight on. The video of George Floyd dying under an officer’s knee brought global attention to a problem that Black people had largely faced alone. Without our usual distractions to use as an excuse for indifference, we engaged in hard conversations, confronted ugly truths — had equally ugly arguments — and took the first steps toward addressing police brutality and racial inequities. Even though the protests have quieted, the work continues and we are starting to see the results: An officer in Columbus, Ohio, was fired after shooting an unarmed Black man this week.
This was the year we became politically engaged. Instead of shrugging our shoulders as we do most years, convinced we have no impact on our government, we chose action. We called and wrote our representatives; we turned out to vote in record numbers; and we fought tooth and nail to defend our democracy.
This was the year we saw what could happen if we lessened — if not terminated — our use of fossil fuels. With planes grounded and people forced to stay at home, we saw the smog-filled air over the U.S.’s biggest cities clear. In the first six months of 2020, worldwide carbon emissions dropped 8.8%, according to Science Daily, but the short-term dip had only a short-term impact.
2020 was undeniably awful. However, it also opened our eyes to a variety of systemic issues. If 2020 was the year that spotlighted our troubles, let 2021 be the year we make a concerted effort to fix those problems. And at midnight, let us ring in a better year.
