This has been a crazy year so far, and my feeling tells me that that the second half of this year still has some significant action coming our way. So buckle up and don’t let your guard down (i.e., fucking wear that mask).
We are approaching the end of the first half, and as I reflect over the past five months, there is one specific fear, and one particular hope that I carry with me. In fact, they are both two sides of the same medal.
What’s my fear? My fear is that everything that we have been through this year will fade from memory. The moment the news cycles focus on the election, once we are consumed by the debates, a gaffe by Biden, and outrageous tweet by Trump, that we will forgot everything we have been through the past 6 months. And it doesn’t have to be the election or something political, maybe it’s a natural disaster that’s around the corner, maybe it’s something completely different – after all, 2020 has been full of “didn’t see this coming”-esque WTF moments . I feel we are all just eager to run away from the past 6 months, and with that, we run away from the opportunity to make it all count.
Which brings me to my hope. Which is exactly that we don’t run away. We don’t forget, we don’t get distracted and don’t leave all this work unfinished. We are all given this incredible opportunity to make long-lasting change, and I want us all to make it count. Growth happens through friction, and boy have we been given some friction this year. Two of the most important elements of our lives, our healthcare system and the quality of our social fabric have been put under an immense test this year. We are given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to effectuate change that would otherwise have taken 10+ years to materialize. Our eyes have been opened to how much we’ve had our priorities wrong when it comes to our public health. We have all been woken up to the systemic racism in our systems. Now what? Are we really just one distraction away from forgetting all? I just hope we don’t turn around and leave this all as half-finished work, but that we seize this opportunity to keep working, keep yelling, keep fighting for the change that we know we deserve.
Now you are probably thinking yourself “duh, Omid, don’t we all want this to be permanent?” Like yeah, totally, I know you get it. I know you want it, too. But what are you doing about it? Maybe you still care 3 days from now, but will you be caring about this all 3 months from now? I can’t tell you what your priorities should be in future, that’s not on me, that’s on you. And that’s exactly what I hope you will do. That you sit down and ask yourself what you are going to be doing once that black square is two scrolls further down on your feed. Are you still gonna care about black lives and stand up for them even if there are no more rallies? Are you still gonna appreciate immigrant healthcare workers for how essential they are to our lives? Or are you gonna fall for your old patterns of thinking and acting? These are tough conversations we all need to have with ourselves. How are we going to show up for the change that we want to see around us?
I want to leave you with a profound comment that has shaped a lot of my thinking over the years.
The things you want to change need to change just as much in you
So yeah, you want things changed? Great! But the question is how much have those things changed in you?
Only if we show up differently, if we care more, if we get our priorities right, we will be in a position to show up differently in future. But for that to happen, we need to do some deep thinking and reflecting. We need to ask ourselves tough questions and change our priorities. No matter how uncomfortable it is.
So yeah, know that the next distracting news cycle is just one incident away. So whether the first half of 2020 will be a simple memory, or the beginning of a better future for all of us, is a function of how much you keep caring and not how much there is news coverage.