The other day I read a funny blurb on Facebook making its rounds on social media that said, “I’m beginning to think ‘Hindsight is 2020’ was some kind of message from a future time traveler that we all misunderstood.” I laughed pretty hard at first but then thought about how much our world really has been turned upside down this year.
At first, the year began pretty awesome for me. I felt so much better in my mind, body, and soul, and was thinking 2020 was going to be pretty spectacular. Sadly, little did I know that whatever the antonym for the word spectacular is would become how I’d describe this calendar year a short while later.
It truly has been an exceptionally difficult year. Beyond the fact that all this social distancing has led to greater feelings of isolation and loneliness, I’ve been totally dismayed at all the divisions being drawn. Rather than allowing a pandemic to bring us all closer, I’ve seen such division amongst the masses that I’ve been concerned a civil war could be in our near future.
Racism, police brutality, climatic craziness, destructive wildfires, Republicans versus Democrats, Trump supporters versus Biden supporters, stock market volatility, massive unemployment, such great losses of life from this COVID-19 pandemic, mask rage-outs, multiple city-wide violent protests, deaths of people who’ve made a positive difference like Kobe Bryant and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a presidential impeachment, long-running business closures, world-wide hypochondria, name-calling and squabbling in presidential debates, it sure has been a year thus far hasn’t it?
It’s hard to believe that most of this has come in just over seven months of time.
The frequent conversation I hear around me now is whether 2021 will get any better. What will our world look like beyond all this? Will we remain primarily a mask-based, socially distant society with people staying more away from each other than not, avoiding touch, handshakes, and hugs? Will things that we once enjoyed going to like blockbuster movies, headliner concerts, and major sporting events in droves ever return? And for those like me, trying to still live a sober life in recovery, will we ever get back to regularly meeting in person?
To be honest, questions like these have been as difficult to deal with, as it has been with all the unknowingness related to my health over the past decade. I’ve had to live every single day with a total question mark about what tomorrow will bring with my health, where any sort of control I’ve tried to exert to make my life feel better and more rational has been met with an equal and opposite force of irrationality.
And that indeed is what 2020 has felt like for me, a year of irrationality where life has become completely paradoxical from what I first thought this year might bring.
I honestly can’t imagine what Jesus would be saying right now if he had to live through 2020. Maybe He wouldn’t be saying anything and instead, just be shaking his head in sorrow over all our disunity? Ultimately, I’m severely disappointed at how divided our nation and really all our peoples have become, when I would have thought a terrible pandemic might have united all of us on a greater path towards unconditional love.
Nevertheless, as our upcoming election rapidly approaches, I just want to say that no matter who becomes our president for the next four years, that for life to stabilize, it’s going to take a lot more acceptance and love and a lot less finger-pointing and judgment. And while I know plenty continue to say that I live in such an idealistic view of how to course correct all this, I choose to live out my life with hope and faith that there is something far Greater than all of this, that can not only heal all my health issues, but unite us all, and that is how I keep going, in a crazy world where “Hindsight Is 2020” has completely taken on a totally different meaning, even when it’s said in jest.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
