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By James Peters

Two & Out

PETERS: After this ‘annus horribilis’, there is reason for optimism about 2021

Dec 18, 2020 | 10:35 AM

THREE-HUNDRED-FIFTY-THREE. We are currently on Day 353 of the Year of our Lord, 2020.

For many of us, that means 353 days of misery and grief. Largely thanks to a global pandemic, we look back on 2020 as an ‘annus horribilis,’ a terrible year.

In the past, I have spent a lot of time dwelling on the fact that the turning of the calendar doesn’t matter much. Maybe too much time.

One year bled into another and, unless you had something specific planned for the new year itself, there was no good reason to believe the next year would be better than the one that passed.

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There was no good reason to believe it would be worse, either.

But people who applied baseless optimism to the future had just as much chance of being wrong as people who were overly pessimistic about the future.

There will be positives and negatives in the new year and there’s a good chance they will all even out in the wash.

My baseline position, as you can see, is not optimism, and that means I’m rarely disappointed. It works out nicely that way.

But that’s a normal year. In 2020, if I’m truly honest with myself, I am hopeful when I think about the new year.

I am hopeful even just looking at the digits 2-0-2-1.

I am hopeful even though I know there will be much more spread of this confounded virus next year, more illnesses, more death, more impatience and more fatigue.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, thanks to the truly mind-boggling speed in which the scientific community has presented us with effective vaccines for COVID-19.

For most of us, that light will come in 2021, and we will be able to get back to the normal for which we all yearn.

That in and of itself is good reason to celebrate the turning of the calendar to January.

Even for those of us non-optimists, it is okay to at least breathe a sigh of relief.

I’m optimistic, too, because I think we have learned lessons during this annus horribilis — lessons about how to treat each other that have effectively shown us what to do and what not to do.

We can take those lessons into the new year and, if we do it just right, maybe it won’t even out in the wash. Maybe it will come out better for all of us.

It’s Day 353. We have just 13 days left in 2020.

Let’s power through them and see the sun rise again in 2021.

——

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.