Everyone has been thru a lot in 2020. In every way possible. The Empty Year. The Year of No Traffic. But the streets were not always empty. So was it the Year Of Protests, The Year of Black Lives, the Year of Justice Deferred, or all three?
The Lockdown Year, Layoff Year, The Year of the Long Summer Break. The Year of Solitude. Or maybe just Streaming Time! The Barren Shelf Year. The Year We Learned Just How Important Toilet Paper Is. Sometimes we acted as if it were more important than justice.
Of course we could keep it simple with The Year of the Pandemic (please God, not Year One of the Pandemic). Or even just The Year of Death. The Crying Year.
It is December. At long last, the year will be gone. Gone, but not forgotten. Never that. The Year We Must Not Forget. The Year We Will Look Back Upon Forever. But now we must look forward. There is a new year to name. What will '21 bring us? What will transpire, how will we react, what name will fit? Let’s not wait to find out. Let’s name it now.
I say the year of no negativity. We've been thru too much. You see, there’s another magical thing about names. Sometimes they transform reality. Sometimes, when you name a thing, that thing changes. Our perception of it changes, and then sometimes, just every now and then, what we name changes too. We can do this with the coming year. We can name it before it names itself. We can name it, and then make sure it lives up to the name.