2020 – “Let’s not talk about it.”
2020 – “Petition on skipping this year and moving forward to 2021.”
2020 – “The year that took away someone’s dreams, and someone’s loved ones (Kisike sapne le gaya toh kisike apne)”
2020 – “This is the worst year ever. What all we thought to do this year and how much could we do”
2020 – “Is this what we celebrated New Year’s for? Really?”
We all have made such statements this year, because well, 2020 did hit us really hard but let’s ask ourselves, how would we remember this year? How do we want to remember it? Well, of course, the COVID Outbreak Year or the Year of the Pandemic when things just seemed to get worse, but did we learn something? Yes, we did and let’s carry that forward.
While the year was a disaster on a larger scale from Covid to Australian Bushfires, from the Oil Spill in Russia’s Arctic region to Uttarakhand forest fires, from the Cyclon Amphan in West Bengal and Odisha to Spring Tornadoes in the US, from the suicide of a young amazing Indian actor to heinous rape cases (but what’s new in that, right?), from the loss of jobs to farmers protesting against new constitutional bills, from the Beirut explosion to a lot more. To top these all, we were under a worldwide lockdown while following preventive measures like regular sanitization of our hands and items, and the use of masks. It was hard being at home all day and getting our heads filled with negative news from across the globe.
But the silver lining is that this lockdown gave us the time and opportunity to understand ourselves better and the realization that how significant the smallest of the things in our life is. As humans, we have the tendency to take people, relationships, work and the time we spend with our loved ones for granted. With people losing their jobs, nobody able to meet their loved ones, kids unable to go to school and play making them stuck to their screens, and many more such scenarios, we have learnt to be grateful for all things we couldn’t do, for the people we couldn’t meet, for the food we couldn’t order and a lot more. Not just that, we have realized how there are so many people much underprivileged than us and this year, so many of us have tried to help them in some manner, be it our housemaids, the garbage collector, the cleaners, drivers and the list goes on. We also noticed and appreciated the efforts of our frontline workers including the Armed Forces, Doctors, Nurses, Police, delivery valets and everyone who kept working during this phase for us.
With the understanding of the relevance of hygiene, immunity and physical health, we have also learnt how very important is our Mental Health and how it can affect every aspect of our life. We have learnt to introspect and work on our cons. Many of us have found our passion during this lockdown owing to the idle time we got, and some of us have taken the courage to quit our jobs without even a backup plan.
But what matters the most is that all of us have tried to get through this year with a smile on our faces despite having lost someone or something in our lives, we’ll be entering 2021 much stronger and with the courage to face the virus and any setback that may come our way. Yes, we planned a lot for this year but didn’t get through it, but this year was not for accomplishments. It doesn’t matter if we did not achieve or accomplish or even improved in anything, and it’s completely fine if we had a downfall, what matters is that we managed to get through this year as it was for surviving and accepting and becoming a stronger and mentally fitter version of ourselves for the upcoming year.
Let’s hope we get the COVID Vaccine soon and can resume our ‘Old Normal’ with the implementation of the learned lessons during this phase.
Rise and Shine,
Happy New Year!!
Meenu Ahuja
About Author: Meenu is a Commerce graduate with an experience of more than 2.5 years in the same field. She is passionate about mental health, Social Psychology and Stigmas with an aspiration to become a Counselor after doing her Masters in Psychology. She loves reading, writing and is a fan of Sitcoms and movies.
Awesome use of words. By every article you are growing as a writer always eager for new article to be published.
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