Last year, as we wrapped up 2020, so many of us looked around and wondered what the world would be like now. Would many people return to the office? Would kids return to classrooms? Would we return to restaurants, watch games, travel anywhere without thinking? The COVID-19 vaccine helped move many of us in that direction, but as 2021 ends, we’re still grappling with many of those same questions.
Like many people, there were entire days this year when the only human interaction I had was through a screen.
The result has been the most unusual and difficult year of my life. (I suspect a lot of the people reading this might say the same.) 2020 had a brief period of relative normalcy before COVID-19 upended everything. In 2021, the pandemic has dominated our lives since day one. We’ve all had to adapt to a “new normal,” although what that looks like is different for every person. For me, the result has been a year spent mostly online.
I had stretches of time without any face-to-face social interaction. If I had a break between meetings, I’d walk around the home just to see something different. Once I got vaccinated, I started having some small in-person get-togethers, but my social life is still a lot more digital than it used to be.
It’s been a strange and disorienting experience. My personal world has never felt smaller than it did over the last twelve months.
At the same time, this year was a reminder that our world is more connected than ever.
No matter how you experienced the pandemic, whether, from a personal point of view or a psychological point of view, the fact is that at some level, we have all changed permanently by this experience, whether we are aware of it or not.
Unprecedented experiences lead to unprecedented lessons. In the bizarre year of a once-in-a-century pandemic, we have all learned truths about ourselves and also about others that would not have been accessible in ordinary times. Despite all its tragedy, deaths, hardship and limitations, the pandemic has taught us and reminded us of so many important things which shows how it is part of the human condition to learn most in crisis.
As odd as this testing, difficult time has been, it’s also brought many insights and understandings.
It has shown how life really is: cruel, tragic, transient as well as deeply meaningful and joyful, hopelessly tragic but also endlessly fascinating.
