Dear 2020

It’s been a difficult time for us all, and I wanted to create a positive vision to work towards, an energetic anchor in the future. I read this Dear 2020 Letter by Scott Ludlam as part of a project called Assembly for the Future. I found this creative project so comforting that I thought I’d write my own Dear 2020 letter. And then thought it might be comforting to you too, so here it is.

Dear 2020,

We made it.

Everyone told us that humans were intrinsically bad, born sinners. We were led to believe that in the case of a zombie apocalypse it would be dog-eat-dog, every man for himself. Armed with guns, building walls, hoarding wealth.

But 2020 gave us a sneak peek of the apocalypse and it was bad.

But humans were good.

It didn’t always feel like that at the time. The news cycle focusing on ridiculing the rare people who acted without care, who broke the rules and flaunted restrictions. Social media was crowded with deliberate disinformation campaigns and hateful, hurtful bullying and pile ons.

But that’s not the full story.

The large majority of people found resilience they never knew they had. During perhaps the hardest year many people had ever lived through, we found each other.

Problems that already existed were exacerbated - loneliness, gender inequality, economic instability. We could no longer avoid these issues. No longer bury our heartache in consumerism. We had nowhere to hide. And it hurt.

So we turned to each other, virtually and from a safe physical distance. We set up street WhatsApp groups. We helped elderly neighbours who we would never have otherwise met. We panic-bought vegetable seedlings and chickens and electric bikes.

These were the small things, the immediate wins.

Our sacrifices mattered, they added up to something greater than the parts.

Growing under the surface was something much bigger, something longer-term.

The pandemic gave our hyper-independent society a new perspective on the collective good. We learned so much about acts of service, sacrifices for the common good and caring deeply for each other.

It was hard at first, confusing, we felt resistance. So many changes, so much new information, so much to get used to.

But in general, we came together. We tried new things, we learned fast, we accepted ambiguity, we used common sense, we listened to experts and we all did our best.

To care about COVID-19 is to care about our elders, vulnerable, sick, disabled and poor.

At first, it looked like we might not care. Some leaders definitely didn’t. But over time, the scale of sacrifice showed that we did. We really care about each other.

And this deep and wide human caring began to permeate. Like most change, it started from the ground up. Elected leaders had no choice but to follow.

This love grew and grew.

Individuals stopped internalising the problems of our society as they started to look to each other. We realised we weren’t the only one feeling disconnected, feeling lonely, feeling infinite pressure and stress.

We realised that individuals were not to blame for the rapid spread of coronavirus, we stopped focussing on rebellious teenagers or under-paid and under-qualified security guards and started to see patterns, seeing the systems.

For years neo-capitalist governments have talked about cutting costs, but cost-cutting in the short term can cost us dearly in the long term. Just like getting your car serviced or insuring your home costs money this year but saves money in the future. Just like ignoring climate change now is passing that burden on to future generations.

So we began to invest in a well-paid, well-trained and well-resourced public sector. We invested in education and job-creation and universal health care and a green transition. Knowing that these things would save us enormous amounts of money and heartache for generations to come.

In some ways the pandemic was hugely destabilising, in other ways, it was grounding. We realised what really mattered.

Food, friendship, toilet paper!

We changed our world because we changed ourselves. We took the time to examine our stories, beliefs, privilege. To listen and learn from people around the world who have more experience with surviving. First Nations people. People with chronic illness or disability. People who knew what it meant to survive for a long before 2020.

It was hard to sit with these stories. Many times we needed to look away. To pause, breathe, take a break. More listening. More learning. 

And that love? It grew.

We became reconnected. We became whole again. We stopped fighting for crumbs and began to ask the important question….why not both?

Health and the economy.

Intuition and cognition.

Empathy and expertise.

We chose both.

You see, the pandemic required the best of all of us. The best of science and data. The best of poetry and mythology. The best of medicine and mental health. The best of economics and human rights.

And this togetherness, this trust and connection and community, was exactly what was missing in our approach to life before the pandemic. And this approach is exactly what is needed to navigate and mitigate the worst of climate change.

Without our collective enormous effort, the pandemic would have killed 40 million people in 2020.

Instead, we not only saved lives, but we also reformed our economic system, health system, democracy, employment conditions, improved gender and racial equality and most important of all, we saw what humanity is capable of when we put our hearts and minds together for the collective good.

And that’s what really changed everything.

Our elected leaders learned that leaving people behind would no longer get them elected. And they changed. They really had no choice.

And we began to walk together. Because there was no other way.

We were once on a dead-end road.

But 2020 stopped us in our tracks.

We listened. We learned. We reconnected. We began walking together.

And we made it.