Carrying the year forward

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Editorial

Carrying the year forward

The murmur of voices rising from the departures lounge is cut by the highpitched chime announcing the latest airport updates. The holiday season is typically a busy period for travel. Typically, but not surely, as last year – the year of Covid-19 – has shown.

It is the final weeks of 2021, when the world did a collective jiggle to shake off the coronavirus. Vaccines that first started being administered in the richer regions in the dying days of 2020, have since arrived in all countries and the absolute majority of people in all continents have finally had their jab-moment, which has become a thing.

The elderly now appear re-invigorated, children carry bigger aspirations. Families kindled a new glowing warmth as they reunited after months of terrible distance. And the reunions were more regular and more jubilant. There is a general sparkle in cities and towns and markets are brimming with confidence. But economies are not out of the woods yet and businesses are still reeling from the devastation of the pandemic. Nevertheless, investors are looking forward to better times and entrepreneurial minds are flickering with possibilities for innovation.

The private sector is engaging in creative ways to drive social purpose and share its expertise with public and other stakeholders to strengthen communities, sustain resources, champion social justice, and improve governance.

2021 has been the year for international collaboration, beautifully epitomised in the precarious but hugely successful events from the Tokyo Summer Olympics to the Dubai Expo to the Milan Salone del Mobile.

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Everyone looks forward to a life of closer interactions, free from wary looks between strangers and muffled conversations from behind masks. But 2020 was not a wasted year at all – it was a year of teaching.

Webinars can now be scaled up to hundreds of thousands of participants and technologies such as Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence have advanced by leaps and bounds in an extremely short period to be able to shift any conference or occasion online. But attendees still flocked to major events almost as if to make up for the lack of human contact during the 2020 pandemic.

Now as 2022 approaches, the world is getting ready for lift-off.

*** In truth, 2021 is still all to be lived and the challenges that the new year has in store are yet unknown. But the spirit of hope and optimism that normally guides people from one year into another is more palpable this time as we consign the 2020 calendar to litter bin.

Everyone looks forward to a life of closer interactions, free from wary looks between strangers and muffled conversations from behind masks. But 2020 was not a wasted year at all – it was a year of teaching.

We learned that the power of communities is bigger than the most daunting of challenges. We learned that economies are only as strong as their essential workers. That technology integration opens unimagined opportunities for better quality of life. That production processes can be a force for social good. That the dignity of every person is a treasure held in common.

If 2021 feels so full of promise, it is because we ready to put the lessons of 2020 into practice.

JESMOND SALIBA