In December of 2020, a friend and I were discussing an event that happened in February.

“That was this year?  It feels like that happened last year,” I said.

“Feels like ages ago,” my friend agreed.

It was also in February of 2020 that my San Francisco 49ers were in the Superbowl and lost (don’t remind me) but even that feels like it was a few years ago.

It seems like life Pre-Covid was years ago even though we’ve been enduring covid life for 8 months.

Did we lose an entire year? What happened to 2020?

The Long and Short of It

2020 feels as if it is both the longest year and the shortest year ever.

We have to be mindful that this year has produced tremendous change, upheaval, and shift in a short amount of time.

Life changed overnight and these past few months have been about adapting, adjusting, and even coming to terms with what the “Next Normal” will look like.

Accept and Allow

Here are my two pieces of advice as we attempt to come to terms with the year that was 2020: Accept and Allow Closure to Take Place

Accept that life has changed and we are already in the next normal and allow room for closure.

Stop trying to make fetch happen.  It’s not going to happen. 

Yes, that’s a quote from the great masterpiece that is Mean Girls but it’s also my mantra as we close out 2020.  So many people seem DETERMINED TO FORCE life to be what it was Pre-Covid but that isn’t going to happen.

There are many things that aren’t going back to the way they used to be and perhaps we can use the last month of the year to really process this and allow time for closure.

I will address this more in-depth at a later date but 2020 feels like closure for this era of history.  It definitely feels like the culmination of many systems that have proved not to be viable and were unsustainable.

I can say anecdotally that there have been things that were on their last legs and the pandemic sped up the inevitable.

The next normal is here and it will require acceptance of change and allowance for closure.

Change is hard, change in the midst of chaos is even harder. We must also be patient with ourselves because closure is a process and it is not performative.

2020 may have been the longest and shortest year I’ve ever experienced and it feels like a watershed moment in history.  Like those who have gone before us, I hope that we take the lessons we’ve learned from the year and apply them moving forward.