It Wasn’t A Wasted Year

As we come up on a year of Covid-19, I’ve heard many people, especially younger people, comment sadly on how they feel the past year was a wasted one: 365 precious days snatched from their life. I’ve felt that way myself at times, too. I know people who have had celebrations of major life milestones like graduations cancelled, to say nothing of the everyday sacrifices of parties, coffee dates, and holidays. Even the things we do get to enjoy are often tainted by a low level of anxiety. It’s the most natural thing in the world to feel despondent, even robbed.

Is it true, though, to say that the past year was wasted? What is wasted time? Is it the inability to do everything we’ve done in the past, the inevitable consequence of the limiting of our scope? Is it something that can be forced on us by outside circumstance? When I look at the world, I still see so much beauty and opportunity to live. We still have access to forests and oceans and mountains; they haven’t been taken from us by natural disaster or war. We still have our loved ones, even if we can’t see them all at once. We have countless generations’ worth of books that we can sink into with undivided attention. We can cook and play musical instruments and learn new things. Just because we lost some things this past year doesn’t mean we’ve lost everything.

Even more importantly, I saw real heroism in the world this year. Every day, ER nurses put themselves in harm’s way so that their patients wouldn’t be harmed, and an influx of young nursing students clamored to join them. Business owners gave up their livelihoods to keep their communities safe. And yes, each of us made personal sacrifices for the good of all. Young people, perhaps especially, feel that these were genuine sacrifices on their part rather than self-protective measures. These choices weren’t meaningless. Putting others first, if done with a willing heart, will make us different than we were before: kinder, gentler, more unselfish. Can we really say that growing in virtue has been wasted time?

While we’re alive, we’re constantly changing. Even moments we consider mundane change us. Something as dramatic as a pandemic has the potential to change us dramatically. One lesson that I’ve learned from the pandemic is to never take life for granted. I have a new appreciation for the value of time now that I’ve gone through feeling as though I lost it. If I take this lesson to heart, the time won’t have been lost at all. It’ll have been preparation for a new way of thinking and acting. If you’re feeling tempted to despair over having lost a year of life, see if you can identify a way in which you’ve changed for the better, or a way in which you’ve decided to be better in the future. Life was never guaranteed to be easy, but our time doesn’t lose its value if we suffer. Every morning is a new invitation to live, to use the coming day to form ourselves into the person we’re meant to be. When we do that, we’ll discover that no time in our life is ever wasted.