"Nothing could be worse than a return to normality": Preparing for 2021

Updated: Dec 28, 2020

Friends, the long-awaited turn is approaching. As I write this, there are 11 days left in 2020.

Just eleven days until the calendar flips, and the door is closed forever on this incredible, mind-blowing, heart-rending, truth-telling inferno of a year.

I find myself trying to reach back in my memory to 2019; to who I was then, to what aspirations I held. But the 2019 version of me seems so faint, so unfocused, so many disasters ago.

She did not see, in such stark definition, the omnipresent, tangling threads of racial oppression in our society.

She did not agonize so much over every purchase, wondering who or what was empowered or disadvantaged by that purchase.

She would never have expected that almost 1.7 million people would die of a mysterious virus; could never have conceived the idea of a global shutdown that would put many millions more out of work.

Like many of you, the crucible of this year has changed my thinking and my self in dramatic, unexpected ways. And as the first days of 2021 approach, I find myself looking forward and thinking about what we will emerge into. What does 2021 hold for us? What will we choose to do with the time given to us? Who will we choose to become?

I don't know that I want to return to the person I was in 2019. That person, whoever she was, did not see as far, did not understand as much, was naïve in ways that hurt both herself and the people around her. As I consider who I will be in 2021, I find myself recalling Arundhati Roy's words, written in the early days of this year:

"Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it."

"Ready to fight for it" - that is what gets me. And that's my goal for these remaining days. As 2020 runs out the clock, I'll be spending the next eleven days preparing myself to fight for the new ideas, new economy, new world that we urgently need now. Below, I've included the course of self-directed study that I'll be taking on to help educate and prepare myself, and invite you to join me.

I anticipate that Post Industry will look a little different as we head into 2021. It is only right - I have evolved, you have evolved, why should this space not evolve? I'm excited to offer you new content and perhaps a broader lens on sustainability and the environment, and as always, will try to provide information on the urgent questions you have.

Lastly, I want to thank you, readers - for your curiosity, for your willingness to evolve, for your openness. The pursuit of knowledge is the beginning of change; your energy in that pursuit gives me faith in humanity.

See you in 2021,

Addy

If you too are thinking about 2021, and considering how to prepare for it, I invite you to join me in this self-directed course of study. I'll share resources here as I uncover them, so check back often.

1. Start Here: Introduction to the Sustainable Development Goals