Many people have said that this year is one we all want to forget.
Not a chance.
In many ways 2020 has been a year for the history books, filled with events so memorable that they might have pushed other major occurrences back into the deep recesses of our memories.
They included the impeachment of our president — just the third in our nation’s history — and his survival against the effort to remove him from office. Saber rattling reached the point of threats of declared war after a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s top military official. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the duke and duchess of Sussex, quit the British royal family and moved to the United States, and the United Kingdom itself quit the European Union.
That was just in January, which also saw the death of basketball great Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash.
Even at that time, a deadly virus was beginning to spread across the globe, prompting a once-a-century pandemic that by mid-March had shut down most of the world as people stayed home to avoid catching COVID-19.
Despite “shelter at home” orders, thousands took to the streets to protest deaths in police custody that prompted counter-protests, creating racially charged confrontations in many cities. Others protested the continued detention of some foreign refugees, and the rejection of others at border crossings in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border. Particular outrage followed reports that hundreds of migrant children had been separated from their families, and couldn’t be reunited because those families couldn’t be located.
One of our country’s most controversial presidents lost his bid for reelection, but his unprecedented refusal to concede defeat and efforts to nullify the election, aided by supportive members of Congress, continue into the new year.
But amid those major controversial events — and in some cases because of them — historic achievements and successes also marked the year. Americans showed their resilience by dealing with business closures, dining habits and even our educational system. Stores reported runs on basic goods such as toilet paper and disinfectant, and also flour, yeast and other commodities as homebound people learned how to cook, bake and perform other rustic duties that had fallen to modern times. Thousands created networks that helped gather and distribute food and other necessities to those who had lost jobs and were experiencing other difficulties the pandemic had created.
Businesses used remote systems to enable historic numbers of workers to stay on the job even as they stayed home. Educators and families, using those same systems, found ways to continue teaching children through web-based communication networks.
Those innovations, and other lessons learned this year, will lead to refinements and new resources that will continue to make industry and education better and more efficient.
In the end, it will be impossible to put 2020 out of our minds. It has given us not only many stories that we will tell our children and grandchildren, but achievements and challenges from which we can learn and improve our lives and those of generations that will follow.
