THANK GOD FOR THAT.....

Every Friday since 5th March I have been writing a weekly column in our internal wire, today marks the last one for 2020. Time brings fear and optimism all in one dose but reflection brings perspective. I thought I would share todays missive and the harsh reality that no one can see in to the future, all we can do is commit to today for a better tomorrow. Dare to Dream.

Happy New Year

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Thank god for that. We’ve made it. 2020 is done. It will be wrapped in lead and forever buried. It will only ever be spoken of with sadness and grief both literal and figurative. We have lost the one to one connection with each other. We had lost all lost hope at some point I have no doubt.

I wrote on 6th March: “The world continues to focus on the Coronavirus containment and management, Rob is leading our strategy in relation to actions we will have to take. This is a serious situation, we have and will continue to have some of our people who will need to self-isolate, one of us may even contract it. I would ask that you fully respect any request, action or direction that Rob gives in relation to our response in the coming days, weeks and months. As I said on Monday the one resource we cannot buy is time so let’s work to keep ourselves as healthy as possible so our time is not interrupted by taking unnecessary risks.”

Well that was one hell of an understatement. Time will be a great healer but we are still in the eye of the storm, there are monumental fights ahead. Some of us have contracted COVID and we have sadly lost one colleague to it. We will fight and win, we will see it off.

On the 9th October I wrote: “Future Proof

Nonsense, absolute nonsense, there is no such thing.

In our world we often hear the requirement to ‘future proof’ the solutions we build. That is an impossible requirement to meet, it has never been met and will never be met. If it was possible to protect ourselves from the future we would not be living through one of the worst global health crisis in the last century, why did we not ‘future proof’ the human race from any sort of viral infection after the Spanish Flu of the early 1900’s? Because things change, we change, the world changes. Change.”

The change we have all been through in 2020 is change we will never forget in our lifetimes. I am so proud of you all for the way you have continued to commit and deliver this year, the hardest year. 2020 will be set in lead, it will be forever buried but make no mistake it has changed us all for the better. We have a lot to thank 2020 for, the lessons it has taught us could never have been delivered in any academic place of any kind. We will take the lessons of human first, care and trust in each other into 2021.

The clocks a ticking, the bells will ring, the fireworks will boom and tomorrow is a new dawn, a new day a new year. Drink it in people, it will be beautiful, together we will do more than move mountains, together we will build a future that only a year ago would be seen as pure fiction. The future of our lives is only constrained by limitations in our dreams, now more than ever is the time we must dare to dream.

JBx