Thanksgiving in thankless year

By Jason Lim

As I write this, the international media is reporting that Diego Maradona has died. The outpouring of grief and condolences has been universal, with perhaps the exception of English soccer fans with a long memory and equally long-lasting grudge for the “Hand of God” incident.

Several weeks earlier, we also lost Sean Connery, the quintessential James Bond, who defined a manly cool that survived even today's BTS-like metrosexual culture. 2020 also marked the passing of RBG, Alex Trebek, and Kobe Bryant, just to name an additional, notable few.

Of course, people die all the time, even famous ones. But 2020 was truly unique in its misery quotient. Definitely one for the history books. The 100-year pandemic that experts have been warning about finally came and found many of us wanting. Even after more than a century since the Spanish Flu and the greatest advances in medicine and science that humanity has ever seen, we just didn't show up too well as a global village.

Unfortunately, America has especially been a huge disappointment, with 13 million infected and 260 thousand dead. Some predict that these numbers could double by Jan. 20, 2021 when Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the next president of the U.S.

Worst of all, it's the uncertainty and helplessness in the face of an imminent yet invisible threat that's truly debilitating. Add in the devastating society-wide shutdowns, sporadic quarantines, frustrating remote learning, teleworking, suffocating masks, and the exhausting isolation against the backdrop of the constant fear of infection, extreme political polarization, societal unrest and a contentious election, it's a wonder that any of us is standing.

So, one might think that it would be difficult to find things to be thankful about in such a thankless year. But I found it to be the opposite. I found that one's personal sense of thankfulness actually draws a sharper relief against the backdrop of such massive challenges. What were once taken for granted are now highlighted much more visibly.

The biggest one to be thankful for is my family and their health. No one in my extended family has come down with COVID-19, especially my parents in their late eighties. In fact, they are spry enough to go golfing once a week on their local course. With all the news about old patients saying goodbye to their loved ones over Facetime and nursing homes and hospices in the bullseye of the pandemic, the relief of knowing that your elderly parents are safe and sound can't be overstated.

Not only is my family healthy, but my son actually gets to go to school in person. How amazing that the everyday routine of a nine-year-old boy getting up and going to school is now a privilege that I am super grateful for. In a world that's tuned upside down, I am thankful that my son's schooling is one routine that stayed the right-side up.

Not only is it good for my son to have regular, in-person interactions with his classmates and temporarily transport himself to a different physical space, but regular schooling is also critical to our collective mental health. My son won't be writing a book called, “Daddy Dearest,” when he grows up, and I am absolutely thrilled by that. The privilege of the familiar is something definitely to be thankful for.

While teleworking fulltime can leave you feeling out-of-touch, I am thankful that I am able to do so without missing a beat. This is partially due to the technology that can connect us remotely, but mostly due to the people that I work with. Everyone in my workplace has invested in the necessary learning and doing to make virtual working possible.

A fundamental change in how we interact every day requires flexibility and commitment from everyone. Discomfort in change is a given; embracing and working through that discomfort is leadership. Also, although this may sound funny, thank God that I am not essential to my agency's mission, which allows me to work from home. At the same time, my thankfulness at teleworking is accompanied by a profound gratitude to the essential front-line workers who can't telework.

They have to be out there interacting with people every day to keep society humming. Many of them were invisible and unheard of before the pandemic. But as the make-work static recedes from the world, the truly essential can now finally be heard, seen, and appreciated. Thank you.

Ultimately, I am thankful to ourselves because the pandemic has shown that, without us, there is no me. I think this is the most visceral lesson of 2020. All that I talked about above is essentially being thankful to those around us whose stories enrich our own.

As social beings, we are the fluid sum of all the stories that we come across, a river of countless narratives that form temporary eddies of love, interest, intrigue, passion, disappointment, anger, separation, and, ultimately, goodbyes that define our lives as we all flow toward the same ocean. Where we will see and touch each other again.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture.