Rays of hope shine at end of dark year, start of brighter one

The year 2020 will be remembered as one we would all like to forget. Beginning in March, the COVID-19 pandemic started to consume our every thought and control our every action. Our lives changed in ways that were previously unimaginable. In fact, it feels as if they changed forever.

In some respects, it’s been a year ruled by fear: We hoarded toilet paper and cleaning products, worried that they would be in short supply. We hurled insults at Asians and stopped patronizing their businesses — payback for a misperception that they brought the pandemic to America.

It’s also been a year of mental health challenges. Loneliness. Anxiety. Depression. According to a KFF Tracking Poll, 53 percent of adults in the U.S. reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the pandemic. For comfort, too many of us turned to alcohol, consuming 14 percent more spirits this year than last year.

Lastly, it’s been a year of division. We’ve witnessed the birth of a new and ugly form of polarization. Americans squared off in the most absurd of debates: To wear a mask, or not to wear a mask. How bizarre, given the undeniable efficacy of masks in stopping the spread of COVID-19.

When all of this began, we heard dire predictions. Sadly, they have come true. We end the year with more than 18 million COVID-19 cases in the U.S., and more than 320,000 deaths. The numbers are still rising, causing hospital bed shortages from coast to coast.

Looking ahead, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that more than 500,000 Americans will have died of the coronavirus by the end of March 2021. The measured rollout of vaccines means that “normal” won’t return until mid-summer, if not later.

Yet despite the darkness of this year, I see rays of hope for the future.

For one thing, Americans have demonstrated remarkable resilience, adapting quickly in the face of adversity and change. Psychologists say that resilience is a learned behavior — a muscle that is flexed when we are knocked down and then get back up under our own power.

As businesses go, restaurants have suffered a combination of knockout blows over the course of the pandemic. More than 110,000 restaurants have closed; others have persevered despite dizzying changes to rules around capacity and hours of service. One innovation has been the emergence of “ghost kitchens” — shared commercial space dedicated to the creation of delivery-only restaurant food. It frees restaurant owners from the financial burden of physical space, which has proved to be a liability in a pandemic.

Other restaurants pivoted in a different way, feeding the poor and hungry in their communities, offering free lunches to unemployed restaurant workers and providing delicious, hot meals to time-strapped health care workers.

And that’s the second ray of hope: the extraordinary compassion that we’ve witnessed in these challenging times.

Health care workers, in particular, have made unthinkable sacrifices to care for patients. Laurie Chock, R.N. — a nurse manager in the COVID-19 unit at Maui Memorial Medical Center, in Wailuku, Hawaii — wrote a powerful and moving letter to the editor of The Maui News, describing the scene on the pandemic’s front lines.

Chock said, “We stay away from our loved ones — sleeping apart, some of us on the couch, others in a tent in the backyard or in a hotel room away from our families. We have to stop our kids from running up to hug us as we step foot in the door. We are lepers in our own homes and in our community … told by our neighbors, friends and strangers to stay away.”

In the hospital, Chock wrote, nurses have taken on tasks like disinfecting their units, in addition to providing medical care.

They have battle scars on their faces from tightly fitted N95 masks and face shields, worn for 12 hours a day.

“It is exhausting, sweaty, grueling work,” Chock concluded, “But we wouldn’t be anywhere else. This is our calling, our life purpose.”

As it turns out, there are exceptional human beings all around us.

They’re our friends, our neighbors and our co-workers — ordinary people who rise to the occasion when called upon to do extraordinary things. And that is something for which to be grateful.

So long, 2020. Good riddance. Yes, it’s a year we want to forget but the traits we’ve seen, like perseverance, empathy and compassion, bode well for a brighter 2021.