2020 was the year that forced us not just to stay indoors but also to look inwards. It was a year in which we realised we could take nothing for granted and during which we were forced to re-evaluate so many aspects of modern life.

We knew of the virus at the beginning of the year but we had thought that things would calm down and that — as in the case of the SARS and MERS viruses — things would soon be under control. But, by the end of January coronavirus cases, at 7,700 globally, had overtaken SARS and the infection rate was galloping. Around the time the World health Organisation declared coronavirus a public health emergency we were more interested in speculating about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s rift with the royal family and wondering who would be triumphant at the Oscars. But then life changed, it became all about protecting ourselves and protecting our communities, it became about defending ourselves against an insidious, invisible enemy.

No more casual trips. No more short breaks, long flights, short metro rides or general globetrotting. What followed was us re-learning the importance of practicing social distancing and washing hands properly… of avoiding crowded venues. The social restrictions were not easy and many of us struggled to cope with the loneliness and the uncertainty. Here in the UK when lockdown became highly likely, panic buying resulted in supermarket shelves being wiped clean. Toilet paper and hand soap completely sold out and supermarkets then had to put a limit on the number of these you were allowed to buy. After lockdown was imposed electronic bread-makers and yeast completely sold out. People began to think about growing their own food, baking their own bread and raising their own chickens so that they could be self sufficient.

Growing things was definitely one of the things that helped me stay sane and grounded through the isolation and anxieties of lockdown. I planted seeds and waited to see if they would sprout and grow. Little seedlings appeared at their own pace, mostly after weeks; and sometimes after months. All one could do was water them and wait; and then wait some more. The growth of these seedlings, their development, helped mark the passage of time. It helped me give a sense of purpose to the days of being housebound. I discovered a vegetable growing community on YouTube that could guide you through anything. As kitchen seeds began to sprout I thought I would try my hand at some unlikely fruits. Even though the melon seeds did nothing, the watermelon seeds sprouted after many weeks and I managed to grow watermelons in an English garden! I also grew, much to my own astonishment, baby potatoes, ginger and pak choi.

And, like so many others, I started composting. Bags of garden compost were yet another thing that had sold out across the country so suddenly lots of people realised they should really be making their own. Again, YouTube was there to help me understand how one needed to proceed. And then like so many others once I started on this I couldn’t really understand why our household hadn’t been doing this all along.

Growing things may have helped mark the passage of time and given us the confidence that we could grow our own food, but this year of the coronavirus pandemic has destroyed a lot of confidence as well: many people have not just lost jobs and livelihoods, they have also lost a sense of their own self-worth and of who they really are outside of the parameters and strictures of a routine and a job. A growing awareness of this, along with the heightened sense of mortality brought about by the daily reporting of the ever increasing Covid-19 death toll made one appreciate the importance of keeping in touch with people and not assuming that they would be around forever.

Thanks to 2020 I was able to reconnect with friends I had not spoken to for years. I spoke to school friends in Argentina and Botswana whom I had not seen or spoken to since 1976, I spoke to school and university friends I had not seen in over three decades. In each instance it was a real pleasure to see these old friends and for us to speak with such familiarity and affection, to so easily be able to tell each other about our lives and what we’d been doing over the years. What’s lovely was just how comfortable we were catching up, our utter familiarity, our belief in our friendship.

But then there were also those I meant to connect with but didn’t and then, it was just too late. I exchanged messages with one friend who’d been in my thoughts and in that exchange we resolved to catch up via video call soon. I took his number but I hadn’t yet called when a month later I received the news that he had died. I later learnt that he had been through tremendous personal upheaval and that the isolation of lockdown had caused him to become very depressed. I regret very much that I did not call. When another friend passed away recently, I realised that there were so many things I should have asked him about, so much I could have discussed with him. This is one of the lessons I will take away from this year: talk to people, ask them about their lives, discuss things with them, do not assume they’ll be there for whenever you think your diary might allow you to call (Death and Fate have no regard for one’s engagements diary). And there were also people I knew of and might have messaged with, but had never met in person; this year we connected and met up on a video call and talked and talked and talked. Now we feel like old friends.

While the pandemic and the virus have disrupted so much in our lives we are lucky to have the connectivity that modern technology enables. We can see each other everyday if we need to, even if we are on different continents. We can have virtual parties and classes, we can participate in birthdays and weddings, funerals and memorial services yet there is still that yearning for the sociability of the old life, the dressing up, the going out, the casual coffees, the retail therapy, the cinemas, the air travel. But we now understand that these were not essential, these were just addictive activities that we had built into our expectations of what ‘normal’ life is. We’ve had an important reminder of which professions are important to the well being of society and which are not and what exactly are the essential services in our lives…We also now realise that the people providing these services are mostly underpaid and not valued enough by society. Yet when it came to the crunch the people we really needed were the medical professionals, the hospital staff, the teachers and school staff, the emergency services, the municipal workers, the shops supplying food and cleaning equipment.

This year has been a rollercoaster ride. It’s been full of sorrow but also of hope. And among the many hopes that the pandemic generated was that now the world would finally move towards a greener future and we would all try to be kinder to the planet. It’s been a year which has been about restricting movement and closing borders but perhaps even that will leave us with a better understanding of our local areas and help us build stronger communities. It’s also been an extremely educational year in terms of comparing leadership and competence in countries around the world. How different countries have dealt with the pandemic is enlightening. Covid death rates in Europe and the US have been staggeringly high yet Taiwan’s Covid death toll stands at just 7 as compared to the UK where it is almost 70,000 and the US where the number is close to 300,000. In New Zealand meanwhile the death toll was just 25. Why most Western nations refused to follow the Asian model of dealing with the pandemic is unclear, but the question of whether this was incompetence, capitalist arrogance or some odd sense of cultural superiority (‘we can’t emulate them, we are free and democratic societies’) is something we should continue to think about.

Even though 2020 has made the world a poorer place in the sense that it has made a great deal of people poorer and has increased economic disparity, governments seem to have done very little to get the wealthy to contribute towards this dire situation and, instead, seem to be waiting for the economy to ‘recover’ so that rich people can simply find new and old ways to spend their money on themselves. Will the pandemic lead to some sort of change in peoples’ expectations of a more egalitarian society or will this all be overlooked once the pandemic passes? Will we all demand broadband connectivity to be classified as a basic right rather than just another ‘service’ or will digital inequality continue even as more and more work and education moves to the virtual world?

There are so many questions and so many unknowns because 2020 has been a year of uncertainty and tumult, but now at the end of the year we realise this has also been a testing time because it has tested who we are and what we believe in. It has made us ask questions of ourselves not least of which has been: do I like myself enough to be spending so much time with me instead of in the numbing presence of a crowd or a group of people? I think it’s fair to say that a number of people have found it difficult being exclusively with themselves.

2020 was a difficult and confusing year, a time when a deadly virus claimed hundreds and thousands of lives and devastated so many families. It’s the year when so many people displayed extraordinary commitment and outstanding kindness. It’s the year when words like ‘covidiots’ and phrases like ‘social distancing’ entered our vocabulary and when we went through lockdowns and curfews and rediscovered the natural world, went back to walking and trekking and took to growing and cooking our own food… It’s also the year in which we realised how precious a thing simple human contact is and how even hugging one’s children or grandchildren is not something you can take for granted… The year has brought upheaval to our lives but it has also brought with it lessons for us in patience and endurance.

The author is a former BBC broadcaster and       producer, and one of the founding editors of Newsline