I don’t know how to begin. Every attempt to describe how I feel about 2020 and what it means to me ends up as ink spilled on a blank page that says nothing but words do not do justice to what passes through my mind. How do I translate that feeling? How do I capture something that I still can’t understand and that I feel so intensely, constantly, here inside of me? I try to catch the words that escape me, I try to translate a language that does not exist, I just keep trying. A new year is around the corner. Of course, believing things are suddenly going to change back to “normal” on January 1st is just a fantasy. Like one of those false hopes, we all cling to for the sake of staying sane. The virus is going to continue to exist, the restrictions it caused are going to remain, we will never be like if this did not happen, at least not for a good amount of time. However, in this new year, I do not want to lose hope. We need it, we are craving it, we strive for it, that is what keeps the world moving. I have hope in the vaccines, I have hope in the personal responsibility of the members of society to protect each other, I have hope in you, and I have hope in myself. I want to look at the bright side, even if it is considered naive, what else can I do? I don’t know or don’t want any other way.

When my friends tell me they feel kind of stuck I always tell them “please go by your own watch, not other people’s.” This is not a race, even though most of the time it feels like it. If this year many of your plans were interrupted, you are totally right in being disappointed, who wouldn’t? But you are here. YOU ARE ALIVE! You still have the chance to do some of it or all of it if circumstances allow it. So many are not around anymore. There is so much to be thankful for. If we look at the things we lack instead of the ones we have we will be actually stuck. We are so lucky to still be fighters in this fight. There are so many things we can do that we take for granted. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the goodness of life and all we have.

I might not be able to describe how I feel about this year but there is something I can tell you, a new year is around the corner and I am thankful I will be able to see it and make the most of it.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.