With the Coronavirus, the world has seen a crisis that is far beyond what most of us had expected for 2020 when celebrating New Year's Eve a year ago. The changes for our society, our economy, and our way of living are dramatic. But can this turn out to be a chance for us?
Only a few months back, your lives have been completely different from what it is now.
Let´s summarize the last decade: The pace within our lives has been increasing every year - it was getting harder to follow this pace and to stay up to date with recent trends and knowledge. Something being en vogue on one day could have been outdated already on the next day. Influencers helped us to understand the answers to questions like:
Who´s the hottest celebrity, who´s out?
What to have, what to wear?
Styling eyebrows thin or thick?
What shows to watch and which ones to dismiss?
What food to eat and what to avoid?
Those and a million additional questions felt relevant for our lives and were subject to change frequently. More and more social media platforms were coming up to please us.
We could decide what we wanted to see and read and learn and we lived a life of, supposedly, absolute freedom and wealth.
The last decade felt like riding the Amazon stock. It was all about more and up to 1000% growth. You might find this example a bit odd, but:
What does Amazon stand for in a nutshell? Oversimplified, I´d say e-commerce and technology.
And this is what we dealt with too, and what we celebrated: Consum and technology.
Our lives and our work focused on new information and more information, new and more stuff, as well as new and more ways.
Hasn´t the world literally moved faster and faster in the last years? But didn´t we backed the wrong horse? Can the things I mentioned above really be relevant to be happy and feel complete and integrated into society? Is an overly filled newsfeed and timeline something to desire?
I think 2020 showed us what´s actually important. Just to name a few: Our health, our family, our friends, our freedom, our time, our security, and with this also: our jobs.
Will this year and this crisis be the dawn of a new epoche for us? Will we see a new kind of art, literature, and philosophy? Will we think differently?
Did the world slow down this year? Did we finally slow down? Did we escape the wheel of being forced to have more and be faster?
This I do not see as the bad thing of 2020. The bad thing is the virus, the pain, the fear, and the worrying, but not the understanding that we love our family and friends and that the time with them is indispensable.
We as a society tried to buy happiness, we tried a lot actually. Just look back to the Amazon stock. And it looks like we still do.
But hasn´t this year brought up ethical questions we have to deal with? Hasn´t been everyone put in a situation to reflect on what is the right thing to do? Didn´t all of us needed to decide: what is relevant? What is the core? What is essential?
And this goes all the way from the individual and its microcosmos to the large, the macroeconomy and our society.
Are we focusing on the least damage, the most value for all, are we caring about individuals or the masses?
What is right and what is wrong? Is it ok to isolate human beings? Is it ok to isolate our grandparents? Is it ok to isolate our children? For the sake of what? For health or economy? Or both?
When starting to think about these kinds of questions, just mentioning the styling of an eyebrow or what type of trousers to wear seems like ignorance and stubbornness.
How can iced coffee with an artificial flavor even be worth a single tweet in a crisis?
Even in an individual microcosmos, this seems odd to me. Shouldn´t we care about families being healthy, about hugging friends and laughing?
The hottest Instagram pic should show a giant dinner table with family and friends in one room instead of random stuff.
Just think about a fearless dinner with your beloved ones. A party for your birthday where all your friends and family show up to have a good time. Can we please get there again? And can we please value this as one of our highest goods? Quality time with others and the health of everybody.
For Christmas 2020, -thankfully- I was one of the lucky ones being able to celebrate a day to remember with my family - while sticking to the current rules that have been in place for Christmas this year.
Furthermore, with New Year´s Eve coming soon, let´s have a positive and cheerful look into 2021. Another special year for sure, but I hope we will make the best out of it and stay healthy and positive. I am 100% curious to see what we make out of it and whether we see a new epoche of art, lifestyle, and a way of thinking.