Happy New Hope

Where I come from, New Year’s was always more important than Christmas, and so despite celebrating the latter for over a half of my adult life, it’s the former that still carries with it the symbolism of transformation.

The old leaves way to the new, so I take time to wish goodbye to what will never be again in order to welcome what is yet unknown.

In saying goodbye to 2020, I am trying to be grateful, to appreciate. To be perfectly honest, I am not quite there yet, even though acceptance is slowly creeping in. 

Goodbye to 1,79 million of human beings swept away by something that sounded like fake news merely a year ago. 

Goodbye to one very close human being I should have, but was not even able to say goodbye to, glancing at your still face through a telephone screen in my mother’s shaking hands. You were only 65.

Goodbye to the world reduced to the size of affordable living space and one person’s company for so many, smiles hidden under masks, ghost shop windows, divorces that seem to outnumber marriages,  grounded birds of steel, and Zoom fatigue.

Thank you to all of you who kept fighting, with or without PPE, to all of you who kept changing and transforming and to all of you (so many…) who came face to face with daily exhaustion and your own demons of frustration, fear, anxiety or despair. 

We have learnt, we have learnt a lot – we learnt how to be digital, remote,  collaborative,  resilient and innovative.  We have learnt that we are very small but our limits are larger and more stretchable than we could imagine, that every parent has a little bit of a teacher in them, that together we are stronger, that coming to the office can feel great, that resilience can really be learnt, even in the middle of Covid.

Hello, 2021! I, we, the whole world really, really wishes you to be happy, or at least a little bit happier. We hope… I have modest hopes – to hug my grown up children disconnected by distance, to see my husband’s eyes through mist-free glasses, to have plenty of “aperos” with my team, and I am not counting Zoom ones, to dine in a restaurant, to take a plane again, to keep working with all our clients and partners (friends, really), and for all our clients and partners – to keep afloat (same for our clients’ clients…), for all young people whom I know – to have new windows of opportunity open up.

And given that hope means there is more than one way to where we are going, even if and when the intended pathways will come to a road block, I wish to all, every one of us, to have new pathways popping up and to preserve the state of mind to notice them appearing. I wish us to see beauty and infinity, to have dreams and to keep hope.

Happy New Year! Happy New Hope!