Make the most of your chance to hit ‘reset’
It was the year of living dangerously. If you survived 2020 in South Florida — despite the breadth and depth of your loss, your sacrifice, your grief or inconvenience — some sort of congratulations are in order.
Did you manage not to con
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tract COVID-19, while keeping your family and elderly parents away from its deadly grip?
Did your company or busi
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ness, be it big-box or a mom-andpop, survive the ravages of the pandemic?
Did your school age children
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maintain a semblance of learning and growing and maturing during this dreadful year?
Did you experience unimaginable loss but are still moving forward?
Did your marriage survive
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the close quarters of isolation?
Did you keep it together
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mentally?
Are you at least trying to get
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a handle on your drinking in the new year?
As the cruel year came to an end — that’s what stands out about these past few difficult months: the triumph of surviving in spite of it all.
Many are worse off than others. They are in mourning; they are on the cusp of being broke, or evicted.
Phrases both new and familiar will carry over into this new year, if only because the challenges they represent remain: I Can’t Breathe. Black Lives Matter. Defund the Police. Stop the Steal. Fake News. You’re on Mute.
This new year — more than most — offers South Floridians the privilege of regrouping, reassessing what gives our lives real meaning. It is 2020’s bittersweet gift.
One of the best ways that we can pay tribute to our own resilience, while honoring those who willingly put their health and safety on the line to save others — and especially those who made sacrifices that were unexpectedly foisted upon them — is to wear the mask and, when available, get the COVID-19 vaccination.
The time for cynicism, skepticism and doubt based solely on lies and conspriacy theories is over. The befuddling indifference to anyone else’s well-being, shown by belligerently refusing to wear a mask has gotten old. On the last day of the year, Florida reported a recording-breaking one-day high of 17,192 cases
of COVID-19.
It’s a chilling way to start the new year.
Get the facts. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. A new year is here, with all the hope that has
always conjured up in our lives: renewal, rebirth. Another chance to live.
In spite of everything — or, maybe, because of it — Happy New Year.