Reflections on 2020

There is supposedly a Chinese curse, that goes, “May you live in interesting times.” By most accounts, not one of the current 1.4 billion Chinese has any recollection of such a statement or curse having been uttered at any point in their 4,000-year history. We can only guess that something was said in Chinese, it was translated into English, and somehow ended up getting repeated enough times that we now attribute the quote to our Asian friends. The origins of the quote seem to go to the British diplomatic corps early in the last century. I can relate to the possibility of a miscommunication between the British and the Chinese. I would easily understand a gaffe in a translation from Mandarin to English. I watch a great deal of British entertainment and I need to turn on the subtitles to get more than half of what they are saying; and we supposedly speak the same language.

Confucius

I had long heard the quote about living in interesting times but was surprised to find out it was a curse. It almost sounded like a good thing, to live in interesting times. Perhaps the Chinese have a strange sense of humor.  Another of their "curses" reads, "may your every wish be granted."  One possible explanation of its origin confuses matters further. It involves the story, “The Oil-Peddler Wins the Queen of Flowers.” Those of you who follow Chinese romance literature probably know it better by its more common title, “Maiyou lang duzhan huakui.” In this story the main characters are driven from their homes by war. A portion of the story reads, “Truly, better to be a dog in days of peace, Than a human in times of war!” Now that’s some creative translation.

Well, to call the year now ending an “interesting time” would be the understatement of the millennium. It seems that the year 2020 really got jump-started in late 2019 when someone in China caught a case of the sniffles, from a bat. We now know that “bat-sniffles” can get serious and it's certainly nothing to sneeze at. It seems that when bat viruses make the jump between species, things can go wrong. How one gets close enough to a bat to catch a cold still escapes me. It’s easier for me to imagine a botched Mandarin translation than to think about how a human gets bat-sniffles.

Kiss Me, I'm Cute

 

 

 We perhaps need to reevaluate “the butterfly effect” where the flap of a butterfly’s wings can supposedly cause a weather event across the globe. As we all know, this idea comes from chaos theory where the butterfly effect is based on the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state. But you knew that. Since we are all familiar with the work of meteorologist and mathematician Edward Lorenz, I will thankfully not need to explain this any further. What we now know is that his theory also seems to work at the bat level. But I digress. I do that more often now that I have more grey hair than brains. I’m even beginning to understand a cat’s fascination with chasing the red dot from a laser pointer.

The Butterfly Effect

Yes, 2020 didn’t turn out like anyone imagined. While the term 2020 is commonly associated with having good vision, I doubt anybody saw this one coming. Instead of learning more about the countries scheduled for our planned vacation, I ended up learning how to cut my own hair. What I learned was, don’t do it. No matter how easy it looks on those YouTube videos, don’t do it. Get help. I did manage to take the skills learned maintaining my own mustache for many years and I was able to extend that knowledge to include sideburns and a little light trimming in the front. I then get Sue to cut the back and sides that I can’t easily see or reach. She tells me she did a good job. I’ll take her word for it. I’m sure its fine. If you find out different, don’t tell me.

 

Zoom Meeting

So, what else have we learned this year that we might not have predicted way back in 2019? We all know more about streaming video. Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, etc., have become more important than cable TV. Many of us now know how to have a Zoom meeting from home when twelve months ago most of us thought zoom was what cars do. Many of us have learned new cooking skills and have either rejoiced in that new culinary ability or learned that you can Uber food. How many of you shopped for groceries on your computer before this year? A trip outside your home now requires more planning. Facemask, check. Hand sanitizer, check. Backup facemask, check. Get in car, check. Remember where you were planning to go, whoops. Go back inside house to figure out where you were going, check.

We are also ending 2020 with yet another example of the butterfly effect in the world of politics. It seems that, about the time my mother was giving birth to her cutest son, a couple in New York made love. Nine months after my birth, the result of that heinous act in New York brought us one Donald J. Trump. Who could have predicted that the little tax deduction that arrived on June 14, 1946, would one day take a television reality show where he fired everyone and move it into the Oval Office? Yes, an act committed seventy-four years ago, created a 250 pound man who just happens to wear 25 pound red ties. This same man is now planning his exit from the White House, maybe.

We had an election. Trump lost. This would make him only the third president in the past 80 years to not win a second term. He is not happy with that scenario and has filed and lost over 50 lawsuits in a vain attempt to overturn the election. Georgia just completed the third recount and Joe Biden won each time. The three counts showed that the first machine count was 99.964% accurate. In the final tally, Trump lost Georgia by 11,779 votes. Not a landslide but as they say, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and table-top shuffleboard.

 

Cardboard fans

I wonder about the future. I’m now wondering how sportscasters, reviewing football games played way back in 2020, will explain the 2-D cardboard cutouts of people sitting in the stands. I also wonder if we will still be wearing masks for both Halloween and Christmas next year? Will I ever get to eat in a real restaurant again? Will handshakes be forever verboten? Will I ever take another cruise? Will I wake up and find that it is really January first of 2020 and this was all a nightmare caused by too much New Year's champagne and some bad calamari?

Getting back to our opening gambit of living in interesting times, I found a further reference in Chinese philosophy with one of their common maxims. It says, “that the worst of men are fondest of change and commotion, hoping that they may thereby benefit themselves; but by adherence to a steady, quiet system, affairs proceed without confusion, and bad men have nothing to gain.” What picture reference does that create for you?

While we may blame the Chinese for fostering an environment where humans and bats get close enough to share diseases, had we been following the above quoted maxim, perhaps the years beyond 2016 would have been better. If this virus has a silver lining it might be that it pointed out a serious weakness in our chosen leadership. Enough of us saw that flaw and acted accordingly to make a change. May 2021 bring about a healing and renewed hope for the future.