2021: Hope is not Far Away

It’s a New Year. The fireworks that heralded us into the New Year had a different feel. It had to. 2020 was a torrid year on every front. The humongous number of human lives lost and the current soaring hospital admissions in the United Kingdom and around the world leaves a foul taste in the mouth.

The vaccines are here. That gives us hope, even if it’s just a glimmer. As I write this post, we are in our third national lockdown here in the UK. The re-assurances of a slice of normalcy by spring are staggering. Maybe the words of our leaders no longer carry weight. You can’t blame anyone; the handling of this pandemic makes a case for that line of thought.

But, Aren’t we all peddlers of hope? Think New Year resolutions and the unending catch-phrase that people use as a springboard to launch out into a New Year. For those of us who do not have a thing for New Year resolutions, we will joyfully peddle hope.

Hope is the currency we all need in this season, where our emotional and mental health has greatly suffered. Bank it. Spend it. Keep hope alive. For without hope, we will be consumed in the inferno of fear.

Not even the virus regrouping into new variants can stop us from dreaming and believing that we will someday return to life as we once knew it.

The number of positive cases are flying out of the window and record highs of death in the second wave in the UK surpassing the first wave makes for gruesome statistics.

Hope is not far away. There had to be hope. It’s a triumph of science, of the distinguished men and women who worked assiduously day and night to deliver not just a vaccine but multiple vaccines in less than a year of a raging pandemic.

Would there ever be normalcy? Are we ever going to return to our old way of life before the pandemic? This question wears the cloak of uncertainty. No one knows the answer. But we can only hope, hope for a better tomorrow and a pandemic free world.

Photo by Ron Smith on Unsplash

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