Usually, I wish people “A happy [insert year here]!” This year however, I’ll leave it at “A better 2021!”. This of course inspired by the countinuous loop of Counting Crows lyrics that has been plaguing me for the last three weeks:

A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

While New Year, New You is mostly nonsense every year, this year it’s complete hogwash. We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, and it will take a while for everybody to be vaccinated. Even then it’s still a guess when the world will revert back to “normal” and what that “normal” will look like. Not that I have any hopes that this pandemic will lead to any drastic long lasting universal changes in regards to how we humans treat each other, other animals and the planet we live on.

As we have seen this year, the majority of people are extremely attached to the lifestyle they’re used to and feel zero need to critically (re)consider their ideas and/or the way they live, let alone change anything about them. There are of course underlying societal structures in place with the sole goal of keeping things the way they are, but the lack of willingness to even consider adapting your life a tiny bit for “the greater good” for lack of a better term, was some intense bullshit if you ask me. Compassion, more specifically the lack of it, was also a thing I didn’t expect to be, well, such a thing. I do believe that we’ll eventually mostly go back to how things were “before”. There will of course be changes and certain things will not come back, but I’m afraid that they will mostly be the types of things that were already undervalued and/or subsidized. Let’s hope I’m wrong. And let’s also hope that I don’t have to find inspiration in Counting Crows lyrics next year, because DAMN.

Anyway, happy you’re all still here and a better 2021!