2020: THE YEAR OF LIVING CAREFULLY Part 1

Two more days to go.

Everyone is praying, hoping, wishing, demanding that the new year will be different and that everything so wrong about 2020 will go away the moment the clock strikes twelve and the firecrackers light the skies with enough noise to ward off the evil spirits.  

We wish it were as simple as that but it isn't.  It is not meant to be.  

We realize that when 2021 comes in we still be very much in the same state as we are in now, hoping that we are taking one step forward but not after two steps behind.

For all that we have gone through in 2020, we know that it is a year that we will always remember yet we shall choose to forget.   

But all that we have experienced ... all we have endured  would be useless, wasted --- if we did not learn our lessons.  

And even as early as last January we knew that there was something extraordinary about the year that matched the digits to point to clear, unfaltering vision.  20/20 was supposed to suggest that what is in front us is made lucid, perfectly clear because  our eyes are equipped with the right sharpness and perspective.  Yet this was what the year offered.

It would be senseless to list down the names of all the people we knew or loved and lost this year without reliving the varying shades of grief.  

Some of those who left us we have known only by name --- others have come and gone through those revolving doors of our lives while a few who really mattered in the sense that they were a part of who we are and what we have become.  The pain of their departure was emphasized by the fact that many of them had to die alone, isolated from their loved ones because of the threat of infection.

The cruelty of the situation was not only the panic brought by the pandemic --- or the paranoia.  The real punishment was in the distance: social distance meant to protect us from one another by keeping us away from each other.

We who may have taken each other for so much for granted are now punished with estrangement.  We are confined in our homes and made to feel like prisoners of our own sanctuaries. We are kept away from people we loved --- as proof of how much we loved them. We have become the carriers of the virus that can end the life of people who come near us unwittingly or with urgency.

As a result of all this, wee have consciously and unconsciously changed.  

Yes, we tried out everything to surive. But we also had to find ways to keep our sanity, to be able to endure the predictability and mediocrity of going through the monotony of days not to mention domestic claustrophobia.

Thus, we sought for diversions. We took up hobbies. We grew and appreciated plants. We baked bread and cookies. We glued our eyes on other people's lives in social media --- and spent days and nights watching Netflix and YouTube.  

Even if others were already addicted to K-Dramas years before, Crash Landing On You came at that perfect time when people were desperately trying to fight the Stockholm Syndrome during the first weeks of the quarantine.   

Suddenly people (like me) discovered the richness and complexity of these Asian dramas.   Yes, the quarantine has multiplied K-Drama fans by the thousands --- aggravated by the sad fact that a major commercial network was forced to close down.

Suddenly the ecosystem of entertainment changed. What used to fill our spare hours and our down time changed drastically because of social distancing.

Movie houses were shut down. People have migrated to the digital platforms not only in Netflix or IFlix or IWant or Amazon Prime ... but watching films and features in Facebook and especially YouTube.  The diversion of interest from commercial television was evident among those who could afford subscription to these streaming sites or have enough money to purchase data.  Yet, for some reason, the madlang people also diversified their interests and sought for other forms of entertainment. 

Even the most anticipated film festivals of both the film buffs or the sambayanan suddenly had to go completely online and the results were --- to say the least --- disheartening.  

The dissolution of cinema viewing as a community experience through highly personalized small screen viewing lost a substantial amount of appeal. There are films meant to be seen on the big screen and not on the miniscule limits of one's tablet or worse --- cell phone. But there was no choice and it was as simple as that.

In short, it will still take time and rethinking for films being streamed in platforms (and sometimes simultaneously with cinemas in certain parts of the country where they are allowed to operate) to provide a concrete model wherein the producers can make money or even stand an iota of a chance to recover investments.  

As of now, the prospects of investing millions in film production is near suicidal. Without cinema houses and commercial release and pinning hopes on revenue from streaming or the purchase of content by streaming platforms, return of investment has become close to nil ... not unless the producer has the patience to wait for years to make their money back through varied ancilliaries.

The bane of keeping industries alive is not exclusive to entertainment although it is one of the most badly hit by the pandemic.  Think of tourism, the airline and hotel industries. Think of what has happened.

Oh, 2020 changed us so drastically in a matter of ten months.

Out of need, those with access changed their purchasing habits online.  We never imagined malls to turn into caverns where only about forty to sixty percent of stores remained open.   It was (really) heartbreaking to see those familiar stores one used to frequent suddenly closed for good.  

Restaurants did not offer dine-in services for months and only accepted take-outs and deliveries, Thus a great percentage of their work force were laid off  and replaced by those dashing men and women in their motorbikes of courier services.  And because people have learned to eat at home with kitchen-prepared meals, socializing via restaurants has diminished drastically. Small restaurants closed down --- unable to deal with the extended challenge of rentals and practically zero sales.

Retail has plunged since we have stopped buying new clothes ( because there is really no real need to dress to the nines in a work-from-home situation) and downsized our lives because of our equally downsized income.

So what does this all say about the year 2020? 

That we must learn.  That we must accept what we cannot change but can be part of helping create that needed change.  That we cannot insist on going back to our lives prior to February 2020 because that is no longer possible at the moment.

More than coping, we must learn to move on and open our eyes to the options left in front of us.  2021 will not provide magic spells that could simply wipe away all the challenges we have gone through this year.  Rather it will offer even more challenges because the virus is still here, the vaccine is on its way (although we do not know when and where we will get it or just how much of it will be made available to us) and yet life must go on.

2021 will not be a walk in the park --- definitely.  But even as this year is about to end, we must work hard in making the next few months a bridge for adjustment --- and acceptance.  We have to stop all illusions and delusions of entitlement that we are exempted from the scourge of this ever mutating virus.  We are now suffering the consequences brought about by years of carelessness, abuse and irresponsibility --- and Mother Nature just reminded us of how insignificant we are as mankind in the larger scheme of things.

So what were the lessons learned?  They were actually very simple --- as they were quite apparent right from the start but we just never got around to admitting these morsels of truth in our reality.

(1) We are not omnipotent.  We may have evolved enough technology to put a building full of information in a microchip smaller than a scrap of one's fingernail but we are still fallible.  We can build our own Tower of Babel but as in the Biblical, reference, that did not raise us to the level of gods but only became a vessel for confusion.  Which is exactly what we are going through right now.

(2) Uncertainty like change ... is certain.  We can do all the math in the world, swim in our pool of statistics and data analysis but that is no assurance that things will go the way that we want it.  What will happen is what is bound to happen --- and this pandemic was something we already knew was bound to happen some time or another yet we never took it seriously. We were never fully prepared for it despite the fact that pandemics happen every one hundred years or so.  And when it finally happens, the sky caves in.

(3) What we considered important has proven ... unimportant.  All the material trappings we used as medals of self-affirmation have become irrelevant or all-so-insignificant.  At a time when the whole world goes on a freeze mode, when businesses are collapsing as other industries are paralyzed, who cares about what car you drive or ride?  Who cares about what you are going to wear tomorrow ... in your zoom meeting?  All the digits that comprise your bank account may still serve as a security blanket but when the entire system of the world changes,  for just how long can you cling onto what was before?

(4) Endurance must be matched by empathy. And compassion.  Now that it has almost been a year we have been told to stay home, stay put and keep away from one another, we have come to realize how important it is to have one another. Now that we have time in our hands and literally no place to go except the immediate periphery of what we define as our safe spaces, we realize how much we took our freedom for granted, how we abused one another by sheer intolerance or even evasiveness.  So hopefully we learned our lesson well: that we do not merely fight to survive this but emerge from the experience with greater wisdom and humanity.

(5) Embrace the change and deal with it.  What may feel like a curse should be treated as a challenge. Otherwise, it would be pointless to wake up each morning feeling miserable because the ultimate solution is still not within reach.  We have to stop counting the days before this is over but instead deal with each day at a time and making the most out of it by improvising, innovating and advancing.  Yes, there is the promise of that vaccine but what does one do before the time comes when one  is armed with protection? Hibernate and marinate in misery? If that be the case, then it is not the virus from Wuhan that will be the cause of death: it is self destruction ... or worse, atrophy.

Yes, we are all hoping for a much better year in a matter of days.  Yes, we can brainwash ourselves with positive thoughts, wear the coat of optimism.  We can all sing Happy Days Are Here Again but we must never lose sight of the fact that the battle is still raging and we are still plying that long unchartered road from the damage done in 2020.  We need to keep our wits about ... but most important, we must keep our eye on the maps that we design along the way.

We are being taught a great lesson about the insignificance of mankind in the larger design of the Universe.  We are made aware that single virus that crossed over from a bat to a human being has already caused the collapse of the world as we knew it.

But more important, we are being made aware of the importance of being better than we were ... and not depending on anybody: not the politicians and their endless tug of wars for power, not even the grandstanding prophets with their variations on eternal salvation. 

All we need is to learn the lessons ... and move on to the next step. Carefully, cautiously in the most human fashion possible.

And, yes, congratulations: we survived 2020.