2020 – Half full or half empty?

2020 has been a year like no other…a year we have cursed and cussed and waited with baited breath to come to an end! (As if all our woes will magically disappear as the calendar rolls on to 2021!)

Now that the end is a mere few hours away, here I am perched on a sofa with a glass of wine in hand (food for deep thinking, if you didn’t know!) reflecting on a year that has taught us all a ‘new’ normal!

Well, I don’t know about you but the greatest skill (or is it re-skill?) I have learned this year is definitely to live with my other half (of 10 years) under the same roof 24 hours a day! We had never been so much into each other’s company beyond the honeymoon phase as the lockdown forced us into! Well, what can I say? When the patience ran thin and tempers flew, having two stories in the house helped 😃

As the spring rolled onto summer and the three of us were cooped up at home without our usual weekend getaways/shoppings and outings, we reinvented ourselves as a family. With no other company than each other, we learned to live, laugh and fight with each other without the trappings of the outside world.Our days were filled with scrabbles and monopoly, cooking in (mostly his) than eating out, long walks in the neighbourhood. As the school remained closed, my 6 year old’s curriculum shifted more to gardening, baking, dancing than academics. Somewhere along the way, we realised we have shifted from living in events (school, office, vacations, birthdays, get together) to living in moments(happy, sad, fun, crazy)!

The other day, while I was reorganising my cupboard, I realised this year I had not done as much shopping as I would do in a normal year. While that was good for my credit card, it was definitely not so good for my morale. So there I was quickly correcting the mistake thus doing my bit towards Jeff Bezos’s fortune. Who would have thought there would come a day when I would have an insane craving in my mind for “new pyjamas!” (Come on, don’t judge that’s the only thing I wore the whole year!)

But, if there was one craving I had more than any other this year, it was for human connect. The friends that lived nearby suddenly seemed out of reach with travel restrictions. And the friends and family I have not spoken to in a decade, somehow turned out to be just a zoom call away! The parents whom we usually see once a year were suddenly a continent away only visible in a small screen.Still, no matter how technology bridged the gap created by the pandemic I still yearned for the power of a hug! This year has definitely changed my perspective of how I look at zoo and caged animal for sure!

Overall I would say my 2020 had been half full!

Mostly because me and mine survived! As the year wore on and news trickled in of irreparable losses suffered by families all around the globe, it made me realise how lucky I am just to make it to next year.

The pandemic has shown us how transitory life really is and how vain our material cravings are in the big picture! Our house may not be the biggest in the bloc but we are lucky if it is still filled with health and happiness.The coveted promotion that we work for tirelessly is really not that important as long as we still have a job and can put food on the table! The family and friends whom we have not seen in an year at least they are hail and hearty somewhere!

An atheist by practice, this year had been quite enlightening to me personally,as I have seen GOD. As places of worship closed around the world, I have seen GOD emerge in the streets daily in the shape of doctors, health care workers, scientists and other key workers! And world over people applauded them irrespective of their origin, religion and ethnicity. We have never been so united as we were,while divided by a pandemic!And that gives me hope for the greatest religion on earth – Humanity.

So here’s wishing you all a happy new year and hope to see you on the other side of pandemic in 2021!