We all started the new year with hope for a better future, be it a new President who actually worked for the nation, or getting our financial lives back on track, or getting that diet or exercise routine moving in the right direction. It all derailed however when we got hit with the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu in the early 20th Century. Suddenly we couldn’t go anywhere, we couldn’t do anything. Our President showed us that he is willing to let Americans die rather than admit he had trashed every system in place to fight this kind of thing, “No I don’t take responsibility at all” Trump said at one point around the lag in testing brought about by his destruction of the pandemic response team.
I wonder how we might have prepared for this time in our world if we had 2020 vision of the future for, well, 2020. Would people have voted differently in the 2016 elections? Would we have found a way to save more money? Maybe we wouldn’t have taken a trip or two, or maybe we would have taken a trip or two we thought could wait until 2020, or later in the year. Maybe we wouldn’t have decided to put off weddings or other events.
The future is an enigma, we may not see it with 2020 vision, but what we can see is the past. After all, ‘hindsight is 2020’ and we can use what we know about the past, especially this recent past, since this all started, to plan better for a future without any certainties. We can take steps to put ourselves in a position to save money. We can take stock in what is most valuable to us and we can work to invest in those areas of our lives. We can seize onto every opportunity to be with friends, loved ones, and family that we might have taken for granted we could do tomorrow.
In many ways, this pandemic has shown us what we have missed most when we couldn’t have it, or do it.