Among other things, 2020 featured an unprecedented use of the word 'unprecedented.'
When this pandemic is looked upon with the eyes of those long past, those who are analyzing what it has meant to the world and the way it once worked, there will be a language to it. Words and terms that previous to the COVID-19 pandemic you may never have known, unless you are an epidemiologist.
In fact, the awareness of what an epidemiologist is – but not just that, to know individual epidemiologists by name – is a definitive result of the mess of 2020.
I have always had a love of words. Not just their specific meaning, but also the unconscious choice that is made when someone selects a word to express themselves. Though many people believe their words are simply the result of brain to mouth, I believe they say so much about one’s experiences, beliefs - at the very least their birthplace - perhaps without them even realising it.
As a writer – a mediocre one, sure, but still a writer – words are my stock and trade. For me, 2020 brought a new language to learn.
The language of a pandemic.
I heard social and physical distancing for the first time since my Grade 8 Halloween dance.
Shelter in place used to just be for my Saturday nights. Isolation too.
But now we have self-isolation. Quarantine. Stay inside, stay home.
Lockdown.
Flatten the curve! Projections, models, immunocompromised.
Comorbidities. Asymptomatic carrier.
Our first responders and essential services – and retail workers – become “front-line workers.” The frontlines of a war.
Every email from a friend or co worker now begins with: “Hope you and your family are well.”
Or my favourite variation: “Hope you’re staying positive and testing negative.”
But also, every company that has ever obtained your email sending you a message that begins “In this time of global uncertainty.”
And usually followed with “We’re all in this together.”
We then learn of No-Contact Delivery, Curbside Pickup, Alternate Level of Service. If the American Dream is the good life, is the Canadian Dream a Canadian Tire where someone simply loads the trunk for you, while you stay warm and dry?
However, despite every company stating we are all in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat.
2020 has been filled with terrible words that we know all too well: unemployment, layoffs, closing, out of business. We can only hope that the words of 2021 will be rebuild, renew, and restore.
And finally, two more words: Pandora’s Box.
Though the story is one with multiple tellings - and honestly, like many Greek or Roman deity myths, not suitable for all viewers – my favourite version of the tale describes the box itself, a gift given to Pandora by the god Hermes. Pandora is told not to open it; so of course, she does. When she does, creatures that represent all the world’s ills begin to spill out, spreading famine, disease, age, sorrow, pain and death.
But she is able to catch the lid just as the last creature tries to escape, preventing the one ill that would truly be the end of humanity. That creature is hopelessness.
That is the one word we must take with us into 2021: Hope.
For without hope, we will never survive.
Jenny Lamothe is a Local Journalism Reporter at Sudbury.com, covering issues in the Black, immigrant and Francophone communities. She is also a freelance writer and voice actor. Contact her through her website, JennyLamothe.com.
