As is typical at the turn of the year, many are predicting what will happen in 2021, what to look forward to in the New Year.
After what we experienced in 2020, with the pandemic still raging all around us and with grim political and financial debacles still lurking around the corner, it is difficult to make positive predictions.
But, as Alexander Pope remarked almost three centuries ago, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Especially after witnessing a glorious Big Texas Sky sunrise on the first day of 2021, here are one “human breast’s” reasons for hope in 2021:
It is no longer 2020.
There are only 19 days of darkness left…
…and 346 days of sanity, decency and some semblance of normalcy to look forward to.
We have the promise of the COVID-19 vaccine.
We may experience the pleasure of traveling again – to that quaint little town down the road or to some exotic place far, far away.
There will be another try for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Maybe, in a few months, we may have the joy of once again hugging our loved ones, of gathering with good friends, of taking that mask off and actually seeing friends’ and strangers’ smiles.
There will be so many great books still to be read, music and movies to be appreciated, ball games to go to, things to be invented and innovated, history to be made, and – most of all — acts of kindness, goodness and humanity to be done by people of good will.
For so many, there will be a return to work and to school, a chance at financial recovery, a recapture of so many things missed or lost.
For most of us, the chance to finally celebrate that grandson’s and grandmother’s birthday, our own anniversary, the next Thanksgiving and Christmas — all in the “old-fashioned way”
Above all, less suffering, much fewer deaths, the chance to truly hope again.
