Zweitausendundzwanzig

2020’s been unjustly kind to me. The success continues to compound, and I look forward with great anticipation to 2021 and beyond.

But I struggle with relishing in the triumph of it all. I’ve known nearly a dozen people who have perished from Coronavirus. Across the entire country, we’re approaching 350,000 deaths. I don’t know, those are some sobering numbers. There’s a part of this that feels wrong. There’s no correlation between my success and Covid death rates. Nonetheless all I feel is disappointment for all the millions of people around the world who didn’t live to see this new year that should’ve.

I don’t want to dwell on all of that too long. Lord knows I’m not the only person feeling this way, or reminding you of the times we live in. It’s foolish to pretend that 2020’s not a noteworthy year in the chapters of our history. What is a world on lockdown? Who are we when we must care for others? What happens to a society being asked to make a full stop? What lives? What dies in this desert? How do we cope? How did we fail? We’re not out the woods by any means, which is to say that this chapters not yet finished. How will the future judge us? The future is never kind to the past, so I imagine we’ll find ourselves no exception. I hope they learn something, like we all have. Perhaps, from great tragedy spawns a new age. A better age. What’s shown itself to be abundantly clear is that there is no going back to the world before. I don’t know yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. All things in due time.

Anyway, raise a glass in submission to or in defiance of the madness. We made it through this round. That’s triumph enough for today. Eyes up, stand tall, wipe the blood off your lip, and put your hands back up; It’s time for the next round.

Ding ding, 2021