Make 2021 good year for you and choose to be grateful

In 1969, when British band The Who sang I’ve got a feeling ’21 is going to be good year, they did not envisage 2021, where billions dread successive waves of Covid-19 infections.

The Who were performing their rock opera Tommy. The reference was to 1921 and the surprise return of Tommy’s father from World War I, with no hint of the 1918-1919 Spanish flu, which killed about 50 million people worldwide. Against that backdrop, 1921 may have seemed to promise a good year.

Today, amid warnings and restrictions it may sound bizarre to look forward to a good year. We have been downgraded back to lockdown level 3, with a tighter curfew, coups de grâce against the hospitality and entertainment industries and limitations on the size of gatherings, etc.

When announcing these curbs, President Cyril Ramaphosa admitted they diminish our humanity.

“As humans, we are social beings and have a need to socialise with one another. We feel the need to visit friends and family, we attend religious services and we go to parties,” he said.

The human touch, essential to our spiritual and emotional well-being, is discouraged.

All this suggests little new year cheer, especially as South Africa is far behind in the race for Covid-19 vaccinations.

While Costa Rica and Chile start vaccination programmes, South Africa won’t be doing so until the second quarter, at the earliest.

Anyway, vaccinations and herd immunity are not guaranteed to provide assurances longed for by many.

All doom and gloom, then? Not quite.

Although you wouldn’t think so from reading antisocial and traditional media, most people are inherently optimistic. It’s built-in, perhaps as a Darwinian-style survival kit.

The default setting for most is to hope for the best, even in the face of adversity.

“Hope springs eternal in every human breast,” as Alexander Pope wrote in his 1733 An Essay on Man.

Twitter and Facebook bristle with predictably negative lockdown responses. This column will also elicit naysaying. Much of the downbeat commentary is justified and necessary.

Incompetence, arrogance and corruption are the hallmarks of South Africa’s response to Covid-19.

The tender scandals around personal protective equipment cannot be explained away, nor the inability to procure vaccines timeously, while preparing to export millions of vials to Western countries, according to the New York Times.

Widespread lack of adherence to regulations, coupled with poor enforcement, have brought us back to Level 3. Isn’t it all too terrible? Yes.

The point, however, is that despair is not the only option. I don’t mean to be flippant or shallow in the manner of Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

However, if you dwell only on the negative you can become trapped in a downward spiral. You don’t need to be there.

In a pre-pandemic column on 8 January, 2020 I wrote: “Even while we are bombarded with negative news about the economy, downgrades, unemployment, electricity blackouts, political uncertainty, potholes, filthy streets and unkempt parks, there is much to be thankful for. Make your own list.”

There’s a challenge. Make 2021 a good year for you, with your own list of reasons to be grateful. Your call.

Martin Williams, DA councillor and former editor of The Citizen.

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