A goodbye to 2020
Has there ever been a day when we’ve been more grateful to change calendars? It would seem unlikely. The year 2020 will be forever remembered for a pandemic that has snuffed out thousands upon thousands of lives and sickened millions. And the strife did not end there:
• Racial unrest evidenced in turmoil, injury, death and damage.
• A national election that divided state from state, brother from brother, and seemed at times to create a divide that threatened the very existence of our union.
• An economy in tatters, boosting the need for basic elements of survival to levels that rival the Great Depression.
And it was all on the backdrop of the usual tumult of far-flung war and the vengeance of Mother Nature at a humankind unwilling to be a good steward of the Earth.
Good riddance to 2020, right? But, wait.
Wait, because each adversity of 2020 has been countered, at least in part, with measures of forward motion, with inspiration.
Science, industry and government worldwide have partnered to produce in record-breaking time weapons to fight the deadly pandemic. Front-line citizens have reported for duty each day in our nursing homes, our grocery stores, our hospitals, our manufacturing plants to care for the sick and the vulnerable, to provide our food, to make the products we need.
The racial unrest has focused our sights on a needed and overdue reckoning — a reckoning not only with our history but with contemporary inequity and disenfranchisement.
The election that divided us in so many ways ultimately and ironically evidenced the strength of our nation, the ability of our citizens and our government to withstand challenge and discord,
And while so many among us need so much, the fires of our generosity have been stoked. From civic and church groups to nonprofit agencies and local business to government at all levels, we have responded — and we must and will continue to respond — to the economic plight that plagues vast swaths of our national and international communities.
And for ceaseless war, we prayed for and support the peacemakers. And for our planet, we committed and recommit to changing our ways.
So, while we gratefully close the book on 2020 and begin the first page of 2021, we should do both with the perspective and the knowledge that we have met our so-called enemies and, perhaps unexpectedly, we’ve found the good in them. For they have shown us who we are and who we can be — as individuals, as a nation and as a world. We have met the enemy and he has reminded us of our spirit, our ingenuity, our generosity, our compassion and, perhaps most important, our inexhaustible capacity for hope.