Hindsight is 2020

This holds so true for this year.

Everyone looked forward to 2020 so much. Especially us, Ophthalmologists.

20/20 vision is perfect vision. It is something we all strive to achieve in our surgeries.

‘Vision 2020’ was part of our country’s National Programme to control blindness. We foolishly thought that 2020 would be a perfect year.

Then the pandemic began, and everyone started calling it a horrible year. Now, as we’ve reached the end. We realise it isn’t so.

Is it really fair to blame the year 2020?

The deaths and morbidity, personal and professional losses are devastating. Those can never be justified. But, what makes anyone think that the pandemic is going to miraculously end in 2021?

We need to think of it, not as a year but as a time. A time when we struggled, we lost, we were defeated and frustrated. And then, we grew.

We’re all still growing. The pandemic has affected each and every one of us in different ways. It has knocked us out of our comfort zones and made us work even harder to get ourselves out.

Hindsight is 2020 because, looking back, you realise that it wasn’t such a bad year after all.

Why?

It was because of YOU.

Sacrificing travel and sitting at home.

Thinking of ways to care for your mind and your health. Finding new sources of income. Learning to work from home. Adapting to new technology.

Who knows? Our lives may never really go back to normal. This new-normal may become the forever-normal. But, that’s ok as long as we move and adapt.

Life is going to be difficult sometimes. We’re lucky, that for us, the word ‘sometimes’ is in that sentence. For some people, life is perpetually difficult.

We aren’t always going to get what we want. Thinking about the past and what life once was doesn’t really help at all.

But it does help to grow from your experiences.

So, that’s what we should strive for.

I’m grateful for what I learnt in 2020. For how I dealt with everything that happened this year and for how I grew. I’m grateful for the relationships I built and strengthened and also for the ones I lost. I’m grateful for all the new friends I’ve made. Some in person and many on social media. I’m grateful for the hard work I put in this year.

Instead of making resolutions for next year, which is basically a form of procrastination according to me. I’d suggest that we all take some time to write what we’re grateful for in 2020 and how we grew.

I’ll end with this thought, which always manages to fill my heart with gratitude.

What if you woke up tomorrow (in 2021) with only the things you were grateful for today (in 2020)?