As we enter December “Hooray, 2020 is almost over!” is moving to the top of everybody’s mental “Things to Be Thankful For” list. Should it be? The calendar is a few short weeks away from turning the big page to 2021, how much will be new in the New Year?

Come New Year’s Eve people will take part in the traditional announcing of their New Year’s Resolutions wishing for a fresh start to the fresh year in a positive frame of mind. With the concentration of negative news and events this year has given us, one day of wishing may not be enough. So here is the challenge: each day of December find one thing from 2020 that was a positive for you and resolve to repeat whatever actions you took then to make that happen again in 2021. Surely this can’t be done you say! How can anybody find 31 positive things that happened in 2020? Well, for one thing, it isn’t 1520.

By 1520 fifty-six million people, that’s 56,000,000 people, perished worldwide in the great smallpox pandemic. By comparison, so far in 2020 only 1.5 million have succumbed to CoViD-19. That is still a lot of people and the current pandemic will not end when the current year expires. Comparing again to the smallpox pandemic, that wave actually began in 1518 with few deaths.  Assisted by increased travel for trade and exploration, the variola virus easily made its way around the world with devastating effects, initiating the eventual loss of 40% of the Aztec empire population, over 8 million people, just 2 years later.

That was then, now is now. What good came out of 2020 for you other than being born 5 centuries later than your counterpart from 1520? Perhaps it was a new friendship you started with someone who was once “just a neighbor” when you found yourself spending more time on your front porch rather than at work and began trading tales of things you’d rather be doing. Perhaps it was a newfound hobby born of necessity like baking or of boredom like painting. These are the positives of 2020 that can become the resolutions for a better 2021. Talk to my neighbors more than a grunted “uh” is passing. Learn a new bread recipe and bake a loaf each month even if I can find plenty of bread on the store’s shelf. Read a book that has nothing to do with work, school, or that on-line book club I got roped into last April. Play a game of Clue without wishing I had the candlestick in the dining room RIGHT NOW! Buy a spin bike and work out at home with all the money I saved not paying for the gym membership I never used or even wanted to use until I couldn’t.

So … every day for the next thirty-one begin each day remembering one thing, just one thing that was good, that was a positive for you, that happened this year. In fact, just do 30. Take Christmas off. I will not be surprised that by New Year’s Eve you will have gone from struggling to remember one positive thing every morning to rattling off 30 new positive things each morning! Then you can start 2021 with the resolve that next year you will do it all over again – just the way you did this year.