This time last year when the worst of our worries were whether the bird was the right size or the pudding mature enough, we didn’t know ourselves.
Little did we know then that the world that was to be thrust upon us would change our lives and our mindsets forever. The things we took for granted such as collegiality, good health, friendship were all taken from us and reconditioned into different packages. The simple act of a cup of coffee or attending an act of worship became doings that were prohibited lest they should kill us. The freedom to run across a sports field for our children, which we never thought we’d be denied because of the wide open spaces we are used to, was also ruled out of order.
Through all of this came despair and frustration and fear and anger and a longing for the world to be made right again. For the first time, the entire globe was faced with the same common enemy, the same obstacle.
Through this we got a lot of understanding too; a new found acknowledgement of what life is like in those countries where mass events disrupt lives. Forced emigration, pandemic, starvation. Modern society in the developed world had never before had to deal with such an inconvenience.
We longed for hope, that the science in which we had placed much of our faith for every other aspect of our lives would come up with the goods. And yet, 100 years on from the last global pandemic of this scale, there seemed no magic bullet.
Every week here in these pages, we cajoled each other into getting through another seven days, and then another. And there were setbacks and dark moments and the sound of closing shutters across many of our workplaces resonated long into the night.
But now there is hope. Within weeks, possibly days, the first of the approved vaccines will be allocated in this country. Before the end of the year, truckloads of this will make its way to us from Belgium. It was heartening last night to hear Ursula von der Leyen announce that all countries in the European Union will start vaccinating on the same day; an act of collegiality to show that we will help each other through this crisis.
So there is hope, but we cannot rush headlong into it just yet. We will need patience and dignity and a rigidity of fairness to allow those who need it most get it first. And soon, it will be your turn. And even when that day comes, we will need to be responsible as well in how we live.
Arm yourself with the best information and be thankful that there is light at the end of this long tunnel. Soon we will all live a more normal life.
Soon.
