In 4 days, all the people who have not yet voted will cast their ballots. Because there are millions who have cast their ballot through the (now rendered unreliable) postal service, it could be Thanksgiving before we know whether or not to give thanks or head for the hills.
While social distancing and masking up and keeping people from congregating is our reality for the next year at least, the panic, division and pain we’ve collectively endured for the last 7 months may finally give way to sensible and reality-based behavior. Maybe.
Maybe we will be able to see our far-flung families in person because there will be federally-mandated safety measures in place. Maybe we will be able to trust the filtration systems in schools will be maintained according to updated safety code, and our kids can have the structure of the classroom and the joy of their classmates again. Maybe we will once again celebrate the diversity and difference in our population, rather than vilifying it. Just maybe.
Maybe we will all take a good, hard look at the lives we were living before the pandemic; the things we accepted even though we didn’t agree with them; the circumstances that were just “okay.” Maybe we will decide that “okay” just isn’t good enough, and work like hell to change it. Maybe we will take a good, hard look at our elected representatives and actively hold them to account on their decisions on our behalf, instead of waiting until some deranged, narcissistic, evil, greedy cabal actively and enthusiastically rips our rights out from under us. Maybe.
Maybe we will have learned our lesson.
If we have realized nothing else in our constant mantra of “2020 Sucks,” may we at least understand that 2020 has given us all the opportunity to really see things as they are, not as we wish them to be. We now have the rare opportunity to ditch what doesn’t work and start fresh. We have seen our ugliness, and have had the opportunity to confront it. We have experienced our own duplicity, our own complicity. Maybe, just maybe, enough of us will have the courage to decide to make the rest of this decade a step forward, making reparations for the hatred and fear that has blazed forth over the last decade.
Maybe we will all take this reckoning as a sign to step up and step out. Leave behind the old and begin anew.
Maybe enough of us will have had enough of the chaos all around us and embrace the decent, human, empathetic and (dare I wish it?) orderly and calm.
Just maybe, it won’t be too much longer until we can wake each morning asking what work we have to do, rather than what fresh hell awaits.
Maybe.