Solstice 2020: Beauty

 

I took this picture on a day I was looking out over Puget Sound in anticipation, hoping that I would see a pod of Orca whales.  Crazy to even expect it, right?  But Orcas had been spotted in the area the day before, and I was really hoping they would show up for me.  Instead, I found this view --  soft colors and cloudy reflections introducing dusk on a clear winter day.  But despite the beauty of what I saw, at the moment I took this picture, I felt disappointed because I was hoping for something else. 

Of course, like everyone, I was hoping for something else in 2020 too.  But here, at the end of it, I'm reflecting on its beauty -- trying to look with open eyes at what we gained, not just what we lost. 

The horrible pandemic has created investments in new vaccine technologies, and it has ushered in a new age of biomedical research and breakthroughs.  Extreme social injustice and police brutality has given voice and energy to renewed civil rights and racial justice movements, and there is a broad and important awakening to the existence and impacts of white privilege. The failures of our government's leaders have mobilized new voters whose numbers have the power to change our country for the better.  This year of discomfort has also pushed me to examine my hopes for the future and to consider how to really use my influence and power to help others who hope for and expect something more -- something better, something honest, something just -- to not be disappointed.

This year was not was I was looking for -- or maybe it was.