Reflections on 2020

There is a little truth about me,

Which is such: I do love to read.

And I cherish reading the most about the folks who have lived before me, both long and also a short while ago. And I do relish to read and learn of their deeds and the intrepidness that have fashioned their immortal legacy.

It was with the study of these folks that I began my own effort to strive and achieve a modest iota of significance in the span of my life. It was daring, but also meaningful, that I put myself against this challenge of growth, to be not yet so closely alike those who had come before, yet to believe still that there was so much more that I could be and more meaning to find in my short life than what then was seen by me.

And in reading on these inhabitants of history, there was felt this most tantalising thought – that there is majesty and splendour, splendidly majestical or majestically splendid, that was existent not only in their inhabitation of history, but also in their endured observation of history and the constituent events.   

The thoughts of these folks that were written, were shaped irremediably by the world that they then were inhabiting and observing. The character of Julius Caesar, whose thoughts linger yet onto this day in the writings that he left, show a world that was barely a foreshadow of our own. And it is startling to me that I can look around and see and feel our world, and then can I read about another in a book and know thereafter that such a world was once seen and felt by others in a manner that is congruent with my own perspective.

All that I read about, to this was once someone beholden – I can look from a window and all that I see and feel and think is as true as the seeing, feeling, and thinking of those who saw the flight of Apollo 11, who saw the armies of Napoleon march across the landscape of Europe, who saw the assassination of Julius Caesar, and who first rode a horse on the Eurasian Steppes. Such is the majestic splendour, or splendid majesty, of consciousness and existence – that uniform nature of seeing, feeling, and thinking. It all is a thought which is sorely odd and truly small to ponder, yet I have pondered on it exceedingly and excessively, as may be guessed.

My dwelling in the history of the past can cause the blinding of my eyes to a present that one-day shall be history. We ourselves are in a state of inhabitancy and observance of history yet we can forego any thought on this, for the events that we observe in this time that we inhabit do occur gradually – the changes to the world that do cause for a historical event to occur, are changes that only decades later may be studied thoroughly and utterly.

The Corona Virus Pandemic is different – the changes to the world happened without wait. It quickly came to be seen, felt, and thought by us all, that we had come to inhabit a time, and observe events, that shall be studied by those in the decades and centuries that hereafter await. 

My grandchildren will ask me of the Corona Virus. Such is its affect.

“Grandpapa, you were around for the Corona Virus?” to me shall ask the six-year-old son of my third daughter as he keenly looks up to me with a glint of wonder now in his eyes.

“Yes, dear one,” I shall reply, “I was around for the Corona Virus.”

“How did it start? Please tell us!”” shall chirp the five-year-old daughter of my seventh son as she climbs upon my lap to hear my tale. Her name will be Victoria, though so pronounced in an Anglicised [vɪkˈtɔːɹi.ə]  and not with the ancient beauty of Classical Latin’s, [wɪkˈt̪oː.ɾi.a].

“Yes! Please tell us, grandpapa!” cries the third girl of my sixth daughter, her name being Olivia, for her mother had no imagination in her naming as all such genes were expended in the five daughters that came before her.

“It started…” I shall whimper, “with toilet paper…”

They all look at me with eyes a’glittering. “Woah…”

There is disparity between the history of the past and that of the present.

Most of that which exists from the past does so exist in books. Authors have romanticised this and glorified that and though the inhumanity of our misdeeds and mistreatment of one another thus may be relayed to us explicitly, not so explicitly will be relayed the asininity of our species.

But we now do live in the digital age. In modern history, there is no means to conceal the imbecility that is innate to us. There is no romanticisation nor glorification – there is only the icky and yucky wound of this year, 2020.

But now it is the end of that year – and it does seem that the year before had waned and reached its end with not so much fuss for us who live down here in Oceania. Australia and New Zealand are an icon of durability, and so also are we a bastion of an ilk of folks who are mostly caring and heeding. The shortage of toilet paper does tell a truly shameful story of hysteria and it is forthcoming in what it shows of our dread. And it is so, that we dread that our comfort can be taken swiftly from us and that we are put before the truth that this world does not care for us and readily will bring about discomfort. We exist comfortably, but its’ end is a truth we dread and the beginning of this year was the time in which we were brought to see this.

Millions live their days one at a time with this dread as an unending truth for them. In the West, we are all mostly kept safe from this. We are safe from war, and rarely must we fear starvation nor famine, and diseases also assail only a portion of our population, and an enormity of the diseases of our age are born from our state of luxury and our overindulgence in those luxuries.

And so, when there comes a time where we are made to meet with that dread, we do become a little bit fussed with how unready we were. The stockpiling of toilet paper can be a silly mark of how our complacency very rapidly can become panic and hysterical lunacy.

And it is weird to me. A motif of Autism is a desire for control over the environment, and the most amount of control can be attained by rationality. In this last year have I have seen endless sprees of irrationality and people who allow themselves into it and who are uncontrolled and, maybe, even controlled by rumours and prejudices that always are imposed by opportunists in any time of crises. But as such is innately undesirable for me, thus is it sad for me to have seen so many folks behave so crazily throughout the world as this last year went on.

But I can talk much more about how we all kept together in this. In the future centuries, I do believe that people will read of us now, Australians and New Zealanders, and we will be seen as a duo of nations that were made of people who all mostly did what was right when it was beckoned from them that what was rightful thus be done.

The rest of the world has struggled. But if a nation is a utilisable construct for the categorisation and organisation of people for the purpose of community and collaboration, then this utilisable construct of Australia is one that I am truly proud to be categorised and organised within. The panic at the start, with its series of stupid instances, cannot outnumber our sense of unity – if not political unity, then leastwise are we eminently united in our consideration for the severity of this global dilemma, and such severe consideration is deficient in other places.

I can write even more on the pride that I find in others for their kindness that has been done onto me. I wrote before an article on my friend Carley O’Donnell. I wrote on how the stress of the mandates that we stay at home thusly had deprived me of many joys of social interactivity. Once those from other households could meet, we both met and we went walking. This would take me away from that sense of deprivation, and it was from there that I was invited by Carley to the weightlifting club to which I go at least thrice a week. From there, I have begun to feel stronger and better through the sports that I do and the food that I eat alongside. This keenness to my own health shall, I hope, keep me well and fit into my elderly years and may inoculate me to the ailments that beset many elders. Such has been something that was offered by one act of compassion in this very dire year.

And that direness can be seen as such, but I do not believe that one should forgo their thanks for what opportunities that have arrived in this pandemic. I was a little glum at the start – I did not think there to be anything good in any of what was happening. But I can be thankful for what good that there has been.

I can write fondly of the compassion that was given to me by my bossy bossing boss, too.

Once the mandates came to their end and folks went again to their offices, my sensitivity to the stress of the pandemic did not end as swiftly. It was a few weeks before my mind was ready to cope with the outside world again and I was allowed ample time to enjoy reprieve at home and to work therefrom whenever it was needed. If the expectation to come to the office was not an expectation that I could achieve, then such an expectation was compelled into non-existence.

Such was a vast discovery – this liberty that I am allowed by ol’ Nelly. I am aware more than anyone else on how it is that my productivity can be harnessed, and no arbitrary sense of vocational decorum or expectation impedes my ability to do what I must to be efficient. And for few days of this year, my efficiency was in its most reliable state when I was at home, and such was permitted.

And then hereafter are all of the acts of compassions that have been given in those morbid instances that one endures in the span of the year. All acts had been enacted with consideration and patience. The year before last was one of growth for myself but at the start of this year, I assuredly did think that this growth would arrive at its end with the access to society, which I had fought so hard to attain for myself, now in a state of mandated deprivation as we all were beckoned to stay at home.

And much of the misery of the former half of last year arose from that sense of regression, that all I had attained now had been lost. But in the latter half of last year, so many more chances would be given for me to wield for my own growth. In this, however, is there the risk of becoming tired of the world and I do need help in such times. And the help that was given does, for me, linger in my mind more sternly than all of the thousands of witnessed sights of human depravity that this year has given.

And this sternness is so, for I aim to think that most folks are born with an inherent decency, and that the clamour of hysteria can lead folks into indecency. And though this year has been riddled with so much indecency that it can induce insanity, an inoculation to that influx of potential insanity thusly is the decency that occurs in minutia on each day. That decency which was given to me, and which I have tried hard to give to others, was altogether a relief that would cause this year to be so much more bearable.

While we in the West live in comfort, the digital medium, and the ability for information to be relayed so ably thereon, can allow us to recognise the discomfort of others. Thus is it also likely that we can recognise the discomfort that has always been languishing as a likelihood, but that we, until this year, have not given as much thought for most of us have been born into a world of absent chaos.

But that is what Corona Virus was – the arrival of discomfort from a foreign place in the world that then would upheave our lives and kill nearly two million people as of the inscribing of this sentence. Our luxurious comfort was challenged. Then the death of George Floyd would compel us to consider, once more, that our sense of comfort maybe it is not shared by those who do share in our communities.

This idea of this difference in perception did assume a form in my own life. I am someone with a diagnosed condition that has been catagorised as a developmental disorder and thusly I should have been made very familiar with the discomforts that can be imposed by our society. But that familiarity never would arise, for often such was endured by my mother who did most of the fighting for me. But I also had a loyal father and a household, within which there never was too great of a worry of discomfort.

In this work that I now do, I have learnt that this is not so for everyone. My diagnosis does not welcome any judgement against me for I do seem to prosper so well; it is for others that this may not be so. Their struggles would seem to welcome the judgement of others and then the brutal bureaucracy of the systems of our society.

That is what this year has taught me – that this is a painful life for so many, but it is wrong that we should weigh one woe against the other, for we have all been broken by the world and we are all hurting and struggling and what should be weighed is how much help one is gaining against how much they truly need.

Maybe the world will stop seeming to end with the start of the new year and the happenings that are forthcoming will be better. But I would like to keep in my mind this truth – it will always be so, that for someone, or some group of folks somewhere in this world, their world does seem to be ending and there is very little hope for them to see and even less help for them to ever feel that they can find. 2020 is a year that, for me, was not so unalike to any other year – it simply was that, in this year, everyone was struck with a plight.

And while history may remember this year for the marring it has done, those small tales of the love that was given to me, and that I have seen given to others, shall keep with me more than all of the heartache and hatred that I have seen. We are a morbid species and we remember calamity more than we may remember the heroics that occur within a calamity, though we all can decide how we choose to see that which happens in this world of ours. I bid farewell to 2020 with my mind on all that was given, and not on all that was taken and lost.

In my view, optimism is always better than cynicism.