and resolutions for the 12 months ahead,
To maintain the fight against the virus that ruined 2020 and to thrill in the freedoms that return once it’s no longer a threat, whenever that may be Chris Knight
The first of January is the time when most people make ( and often immediately break) resolutions, and I’m no exception. My list most years is pretty standard – exercise more, drink less, read more, watch more TV and movies (for work!), sleep better.
But this New Year’s feels different, for two reasons. One is that the year itself needs to make some resolutions. 2020 has been heedlessly, horribly cruel. I’d like assurances that the New Year is going to kill fewer people.
There is, mind you, an odd philosophical flip- side to the death toll from COVID- 19, now nearing two million worldwide. There are some people alive today who would not be, in a world where the virus didn’t happen. Think of the trips not taken in 2020, the accidents that didn’t happen. There’s no way to know, and standing too long at the corner of what- if and what- did can drive you mad, but you might owe your life to a lockdown.
The virus has also given us weird moments of beauty. I remember a working- from- home walk in my East Toronto neighbourhood. It was 8: 30 on a warm morning in late March, and as I crossed Queen Street during what would have been packed rush- hour traffic a month earlier, I saw only a lone pickup truck and a raccoon, who glared at the vehicle until it stopped, then ambled carelessly in front of it. In the nearby park, raucous bird song was the only noise, and wild chickadees lit on my hand to snack on sunflower seeds.
But the bad side of the year has far outweighed whatever grace notes it may have doled out. Which brings me to my resolutions. They fall into two types.
In the near term, along with well-meaning resolve to consume more fruit and less wine, are some practical promises. Stay home. Wear a mask. Practice physical distancing. Don’t flag, don’t falter. If the pandemic is like the Second World War — not a perfect metaphor, but it’ll do — then we’re past D- Day but nowhere near VE- Day and the end of hostilities. The virus isn’t on the run yet, but we have the means, the vaccines, to make it so. We just need to persevere for the last big push. We can do this.
The second slate of resolutions, I shall make and hold in reserve for the day they are required. Because this year, I’m certain, it will all come back, the world we knew. Cinema, baseball games, festivals and concerts and parties and air travel and socializing and hugging each other. The Book of Isaiah speaks of beating swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. I plan to turn my masks into tiny hammocks, to keep fruit (of which I resolve to eat more) from being bruised.
So I hereby resolve to enjoy it, to welcome it all. I shall thrill to every facet of air travel, and experience it as the miracle it is — we can hop across the planet! I shall revel in the presence of crowds, happy to take a packed transit vehicle to a sold-out concert or screening, calm in the face of a 30- minute wait for a table at a popular restaurant. I shall keep the memory of the strange, silvery solitude of lockdown, and be thankful for its dissolution.
I won’t succeed, of course. If we kept our resolutions they wouldn’t be resolutions at all; they would just be things we did. No one resolves to wake up every day, to breathe in and out. And in late 2021 you’ll likely find me cursing rush- hour traffic — all those people going places! — and moaning about being unable to score tickets to a ball game or a play. It’s human nature to find fault with our lot.
But it will all come back. The day will arrive when we can turn our backs on 2020, consign it to history. At the very least, we should take a last glance over our shoulders, spare a moment’s thought for whatever joy it managed to bestow on us, and resolve to find all that we can, with one another, in the years to come. It’ll be a promise well-kept.