When we first started 2020, we were hyped weren’t we?! 

Everyone was so ecstatic, finding all the creative ways to talk about vision and perspective. 

Finding all the quirky opportunities to use 2020 as a metaphor for sight and seeing things clearly.

“This is going to be our year!”

“2020 new vision”

“This is going to be MY year!”

“Here’s to the fresh start of a new decade!”

“This is going to be THE year!”

Post after post talked about ending a new decade and starting a new one. A few months ago early into 2020, while having the new decade conversation with my sometimes sassy though wise husband (fiancé at the time) made the comment that this wasn’t the start of a decade but the end of one. 

Hold up?! What?! 

Initially I didn’t believe him but lately with everything going on, I haven’t been able to shake the idea.

So like a true Enneagram four wing five, I started doing some research. The argument continues circle, is this the start of a new decade or the end of one? There is a handful who believe 2020 is indeed the start of a new decade and another handful who believe it is the end of one.

This excerpt from a NPR article states:

“The reason people get confused is because we tend to think of decades as ‘the 20s’ or ‘the 30s,’ Fienberg says. “It’s true that ‘the 20s’ — that is, the period 2020 to 2029 — is a decade, i.e., 10 years, but in terms of keeping track of decades from a calendrical (rather than cultural) perspective, the decades are counted as noted above.”

Team Zero has an ally at the federal agency that helps to keep time on track. Andrew Novick of the National Institute of Standards and Technology says he sees it as a matter of semantics — and an interesting discussion. Like Fienberg, he adds that his organization hasn’t issued a formal opinion on the public debate.

“It’s kind of fun to talk about,” Novick says. “It’s a friendly debate because we can kind of decide what’s interesting, what’s important and how we want to define it.”

Regardless, one thing I think 2020 is showing us is that this is definitely the year for some change. 

This is definitely the year for new perspective, new sight, new policy changes, new uproar, new and fresh collective anger because THINGS MUST CHANGE. WE must change. I don’t think this is coincidence that we are FINALLY (collectively) experiencing this conversation of race and injustice while oh you know…IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC. A moment in our history where this might just be the most united (still with a whole lot of division) we’ve ever been.

Friends, I think we have been positioned powerfully for change and new sights.

If this is the end of a decade, I think what we’re being shown right now is that we cannot move into something new without putting death to the old FIRST. We cannot grab the new way of living, while we still have fists and eyes closed, stuck in the old way. 

We cannot fully embrace the new decade until we have closed up some very very loose ends in the decade(s) we’re stepping out of first. 

And if this is the beginning of one, it’s showing us that we have a whole lot of work to do for the next 9 years and that these past few months are barely scraping the surface of it. If this is the beginning of a decade, then it is one that is saying, “we CANNOT move forward as we have been, somethings must GO.”

We will never know the beauty that is 2021 and beyond unless we have this moment right here in 2020.  

2020 gave us the pause, the pandemic, the riots, the protests, the anger, the cries, the unity, the uprising and uprooting, the hurt and the empathy, the learning and growing, the discomfort, the blatant head turning of racism and injustice facing us point blank because if we moved forward anymore, we would have missed what and who we needed to become this year.

We would have missed out on a prime opportunity to be the society and the human beings that this world desperately needs. People that burn the whole thing down because we are desperate and longing for the new. And I would dare say, if we continue as we were, there will be a death to a whole lot more. 

So perhaps this year was never truly about starting something new but putting an end to the old. Perhaps 2020 wasn’t about NEW vision, it was about finally having the courage to face old systems.

In Exodus 3, when Moses sees the burning bush, he notices that though there are flames, the bush is not actually burning. I believe we have finally noticed two things in our world right now 1. The bush has always been in flames and 2. the bush is definitely burning.

May we never lose the eyes to see the burning bushes friends.