Happy New Year! 2020 is finally over. I feel like everyone says that every year. They complain about how terrible their year was then pledge to start waking up early and eat more vegetables. Each year of their lives they say, “This year was terrible. Thank God it’s over.” If every single year of your life is terrible, call me pessimistic, but you must be doing something wrong. Your life won’t change the second the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. If you really think about it, every year is the same. I hope I’m not the only one, but my life now doesn’t seem any different from when I was 13. Sure I’m smarter, I’m definitely taller, but I feel the same; I’m the same person.
That said, even I can admit that 2020 is one for the books. Never in my life could I have ever imagined that I couldn’t go to Italy for Model UN because of a deadly virus, or that I would lose family far too early, or that I couldn’t see my little cousins, or that I couldn’t hug my grandparents. Something about 2020 felt so distant. Like everyone was moving further and further away as the virus progressed. As much as I love my personal space and spending time alone, this year I learned how much humans need other humans.
Before the virus, I listened to a podcast in the car about how older men are more likely to become depressed because they usually don’t have many friends. If you want to listen, it is called “The Lonely American Man” on NPR’s “Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam.” I believe in science, so I knew this was true, but I remember thinking: “I’m not a 50-year-old man, I don’t even like hanging out with people that much, I’ll be fine.” Now, I see how wrong I was. I miss the simple things. I miss visiting my family in New York, I miss having short conversations with strangers, I miss leaving the house without fear of getting sick, I miss making Christmas cookies with my cousins and college tours. After years and years of the same, 2020 was an unwarranted change.
I don’t want people to think that 2021 is going to be any different, so don’t rip off your mask and take a deep breath. We are still in a pandemic, and we will be in one until the professionals tell us otherwise. Please, respect the rules that the scientists have recommended, wear your mask, stay six feet apart, wash your hands. As of right now, while I am writing this on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, at 9:17 a.m., 1.95 million people have died from COVID-19 worldwide. I know some of us may be desensitized to death, but it could have been your friends, your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, your brother, your sister, your child. 1.95 million people, human beings, have lost their lives from COVID-19. 2021 has to be better. We have to wear our masks; we have to think of others and have compassion for strangers.
So far in 2021, there was a riot in which people actually broke into the Capitol building. That hasn’t happened since the British stormed the capital in 1814. Then, the Capitol was being stormed by an infiltrating army, now, Americans stormed their own Capitol building. I don’t know about you all, but to me, that just shows the unbridled rage that these people have. In 2020, Black Lives Matter supporters were protesting the death of an innocent man by the police, and they were met with tear gas and shields. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that statement, but I think we can all agree that 2021 isn’t looking any better.
Don’t get discouraged though. Perhaps this year, if we follow all the rules, wear our masks, keep the group gatherings to a minimum and get the vaccine, we can be filling concert stadiums by this time next year. Just remember that all of the mistakes of 2020 didn’t get thrown out with your calendar. We still have work to do; we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to stop this virus. 2021 cannot be a repeat of 2020. We may have started the new year on the wrong foot, but we still have 353 more days to turn it around.
