2020. A year of high expectations, the start of a new decade and a significant milestone for something new — a new career, getting married, living in a new country or starting a new business. It’s such a nice number you almost want to make it worthwhile. That once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to celebrate living the last decade and welcoming the next took an unexpected turn in a series of unfortunate events.
It brought on a wave of mixed negative emotions everywhere. The media outlets filled with daily updates on coronavirus for months. Fear drove humanity to unimaginable lengths when purchasing behaviours at supermarkets emulated scenes from an apocalyptic movie. We avoided physical interactions like a plague. It brought out “survival mode” in all of us.
We resorted to hoarding toilet paper and food essentials; using hand sanitiser instead of soap; touching elbows and fist bumps as a newfound greeting, as if a new universal secret handshake had been formed overnight, restricting any form of affection as if imaginary restraint orders were enforced to keep us 1 meter apart from each other.
The world stalled for a good part of the year. It gave us an opportunity to take a cold hard look around us. We paid attention to details that usually go unnoticed, because suddenly we had the mental capacity and time to develop that awareness. And the extra time spent thinking wondering what life could have been, re-evaluating priorities and being grateful for what we have as others may have suffered worse than us. We all grieved for losses in our own ways, seeking validation and reinforcement from others, mostly virtually. It forced us to rely on technology and the internet more than ever before, craving for human connection in the midst of self-isolation.
The first part of lockdown may not have been pleasant. Spending days on end binge watching TV shows on Netflix when time in a week felt like a blur; To sleep in until mid-day knowing that you may have nowhere to be; Working in a room taking conference calls all day, not knowing when your day would end; To ponder in your own head wondering when the restrictions would ease so you can get a glimmer of hope that life would soon return to normal.
We tried to cure our newfound boredom by learning new skills — created an international movement baking sourdough and other baked goods; traded on the stock market; bought some bitcoin; entertained ourselves and others on TikTok amongst other activities. On tougher days, experienced more difficult times losing a friend, family or business in the process; And those living out of our home countries truly felt the distance living across international borders with no means of returning for the foreseeable future.
With more time that passed, we had to give in to a new reality. The big plans and dreams that once were became another uncertainty. We found solace in smaller goals, took smaller steps and learnt how to celebrate the small wins. We shifted our perspectives and accepted a new reality we were struggling with before. We became more resilient knowing that we adapted to change and formed new habits acknowledging that time was slipping through our fingers.
2020 has asked of us to let go of our plans and deal with uncertainties of life that were out of our hands. We live in a world now that our perception of time travels faster than we can comprehend, prioritising individualistic goals in life to strive for our future happiness and livelihood. We preach to ourselves that to achieve success is to constantly keep moving forward and don’t look back.
But how often do we stop to look around?
2020 gave us that time to pause and reflect, an unexpected opportunity we would have never offered to ourselves. Maybe in the process of learning how to be more understanding and appreciate being in the now, we realised that there isn’t much we truly need.
Soon enough, 2020 will be a year in the past. 2020 will also always be the year a pandemic brought humanity together — an experience we would be collectively united by.
We may look back on this year to appreciate the time and space we were given to do something we always wanted to or gain a new perspective on life when there was the luxury of time. We may be reminded to pause and reflect on our priorities before we continue on our journeys when we are able to curate bigger, more ambitious life plans once again.
This is the mindset that 2020 has gifted us moving into the new year — so we all have another chance of making 2021 what we wanted in 2020 but with a much more humbled and considered view of the world.
To let go, embrace and just be.
