Last year for the Christmas season, we were on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, and I danced, barefooted, on a white sandy beach new years’ eve away, till I saw the dawn rising from the sea and only then I appreciated that sleep was in need. Maybe I celebrated a bit too much to deserve such an outlier as the year 2020 turned out to be. But, if I found myself writing our family dairy “ Breath to Blossom“ for the future generations memories and for all to remember and treasure what historical year it has been, I would need to appreciate positively, this year that is coming to an end. If I find myself writing and improving my new skill into mastering it for a more professional activity, it is probably thanks to this unannounced year, to whom I will need to be grateful. This new years’ eve I will be writing it away in London and planning the next steps of my carrier. Welcome 2021 and I shall remain open to whatever it will bring and however it will make us feel, hopefully free and alive again. In the meantime I want to share our learnings from 2020.
What a remarkable year it has been! We are closing with lots of learnings, a year that has taught us about the value of freedom, surely for the last generations the word itself had limited meaning. Sofia and Filippo are millennials or the so called “easy jet generation” and since they were born, their civils rights were untouchable, freedom of movements was a given, connecting with friends and family was a norm, eating at restaurants, exercise in a gym and a studio, going to a theatre or a cinema was a weekly affair. It is gone……the virus took away all our rights just in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, their takeaway will be to appreciate what freedom means and how easy it is to lose it, after centuries of wars and controversial long, never ending political debates, we lost all our gains in an incredible short period of time. How? Why? Fear, fear for our health from an invisible and intangible enemy. As simple it could sound, it is the truth. The enemy likes to mingle with us, unseen.
I learned about resilience, I always knew that I am a woman with an uncommon quantity of determination and passion for the things I do, but this years’ theme was a lot about how to hang in there, to think positive, that the lockdown was going to end soon, but then I understood that it was going to be a marathon and not a sprint, and that I needed different skills if I wanted to win the race not just to stay safe and afloat. I understood that I had to search for a new attribute and that I was in need of resilience and to Enrich! even further my skills. Resilience has been the word of the year for me, a word that resides newly in my vocabulary. A word from which I will keep on learning and building on it, so that I will not find myself unsettled again, even if another eventful year will reoccur again.
For my husband, I believe the word has been, home. For a man that has been on planes most of his life, not because he is a pilot but because of our family set up, it has been an amazing change to make in such a short period of time. Home must have sounded a dreamful name or imaginative place where to be all the time. I am sure that he has had lots to think about the feeling of home life and how it compares to his imagination.
For Rocky, the Maltese dog of the family, and for all the loved family animals the word has been, the winner . Rocky has been the real winner of 2020. With the family gathered around him around the clock and not spending many hours alone with its own company, the 2020 has been the best thing that could have happen to its simple everyday dog life. He was even immune to the virus. We were always there for him, to cuddle him or to feed him, and he has been just adorable, the best ever dog. Many families have added a new animal family member during the pandemic, and it was a win win situation for many of them. Looking at him, while our daily routine changed and adapted around the new security measures imposed by the virus, I saw him enjoying every day more our constant presence, and its little dark eyes telling that this is the life he has always wanted, and that is why he has had a special smile on his face for the last 12 months.
Just a couple of hours are left of this astonishing year that most probably will win a place in all history books for the future generations that will come after us, it will be used as a benchmark, to describe life before and after while dealing with a pandemic without a vaccine on the horizon. The 2020 manage to disrupt the life of 7 billion citizen and the economy of many nations and families, creating new winners and losers, about whom we will discover more in the years to come. A year where Brexit was done, the work from home model managed to take off, we learned about living a life inside Internet while sitting on our sofas and where foremost I have travelled extensively with my imagination, I visited all those places where I never found the time to go, and 2020 brought them all back into my mind and with it the desire to explore, enrich! and discover them.
Now lets’ start writing a new page that will be composed in the next 365 days. Lets’ welcome 2021.