A couple weeks into 2021 and the phase of “New Year, New Me” is beginning to slip away. Yet, this year is exceptionally different with everyone’s take on the ending of 2020 and the start of hope. How does a year ending define a start of fresh hope? Was 2020 completely bad?  I personally could not relate to this central idea. There was a consistency of great weather, we had time to spend at home with our families, explored the uses of technology, and we were tested when life got tough. 2020 may have not been the easiest year, but it tested us and if done right 2020 could have been claimed successful. Maybe 2020 didn’t break us, but being a weak society already, we broke 2020. A year can’t control how we handle a disease or a riot of civilians, but we can! Yet, might I say we failed. 2020 was never bad, we made 2020 bad. We played the blame game and the blame game played us. There is no way to justify the way we acted, we must reflect and grow in the next year or so.

2020 isn’t completely dismissed as the worst year ever, with a collective thought of not being a year we wanted, but a year we needed. This past year has given personal growth amongst ourselves and within the relationships we have. Not just this, but hobbies and a new fondness of life were taken up. A common trend of banana bread made, cloud dough baked; everyone started to become personal chef’s. While sweeping the teenage-nation, I was not a part of this lifestyle, I still can only cook eggs and ramen. Yet, I had hopped on the “enjoying life for what it is” movement. Most days that weren’t spent on my porch tanning with a good book, I was outside with the same two friends living at parks and scenic overviews. I breathed in all the experiences I could. I breathed in those moments that caused those deep laughs to the point where you can’t breath. I breathed it ALL in. I had too, because if not, I was wasting the time that was granted to us. Life moves too fast, and with a long quarantine at home, there was much time to finally do that spring cleaning you always said you were going to get around too. Or catch up on sleep, binge a limitless amount of thrilling movies. The time was endless, and was, hopefully, put to good use.

Overall, I have wished that together as a civilization we would have come closer, figuratively of course. I had hoped we would work together to solve the problem at hand instead of separating the minute it was aware that the 2 week break would last all year round. Maybe in the next “roaring 20s”, humankind can handle a pandemic and act responsibly.