Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

December 24, 2020

TEN SILVER-LINING LESSONS OF 2020

A s we approach the end of this seemingly interminable year, I’m sitting in my study with a glass of champagne by my side. You might think I’m trying to hasten 2020 into the mists of memory, but it’s more complicated than that. One of the prime lessons I’ve learned—in some fundamentally life-shaking ways—this year is that we can’t control what the universe brings to us; we can only control how we respond to that, what we do with it. This was perhaps the greatest revelation of 2020 for me, but it seeded numerous other learnings that blossomed during the year too. So now, as I prepare to bid farewell to this cumulonimbus cloud of a year, I’m searching for, and celebrating, its silver-lining lessons. 1. Our Planet Is Intricately, Ineluctably Interconnected On March 18, very shortly after shelter-in-place guidelines were announced in the Bay Area, I wrote an essay titled “Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus.” In that, I said, “Another lesson [the coronavirus outbreak] has made me realize is just how intricately interconnected our planet is. The fact that a virus in a remote region of China can spread to infect the entire globe in less than three months is stunning. Conversely,

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