A change is gonna come. If we bring it, that is.

 Dear future hubster,

this is a friendly reminder that things are not going to magically get better overnight. 

Those who were hungry yesterday will probably be hungry tomorrow. Those who were beaten last week will probably be at the risk of being beaten next week. The girls who didn't get to go to school, were forced to marry young, have children their bodies and minds weren't ready to have are not going to feel any better tomorrow, next week, next month. Governments will not suddenly give back rights they've taken away this year. Hatred is not going to turn to love.

For love, grace, salvation don't just appear. Neither do solutions. They take a lot of work. Maybe a little more so in difficult (unprecedented, extraordinary, trying, challenging) times, but making the world a little less of a crappy place has never been an easy task. 

The only thing that can (somewhat) change overnight is how much of that hard work we're willing to do. You know, good old Gandalf said, "all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". That's a decision we take every day, so it's a decision we can take tonight.

You can choose to be the one who brings the light. The change. The colours. 

Tell your friends.

I won't even wish for snow

Dear future hubster, 

when we (the world) first watched Love Actually, that grand finale scene at the school Christmas play seemed very cute on many levels.

Looking at it today, it was also a bit of a prophecy. Remember when the girl points at everybody's favourite little drummer boy saying "all I want for Christmas is you", and he practically melts and we all go awwww? But then she keeps pointing at pretty much everybody in the room saying "and you and you and you", and he's well, a little grumpy, understandably.

Now imagine them playing a show 2020-style, to an empty auditorium, with their audience watching online. All they want for Christmas is us. All of us.

Or, try if you can, with a wild somersault of your imagination, picture being a person in 2020 who hasn't seen, for most of the year, most of their favourite people other than on screens, from the shoulder up. I for one admit without hesitation, that yes I want you, dear future hubster, for the Christmases to come, and I also want a great many other people. 

I never thought that girl represents me (she's an amazing singer with admirable confidence, and I would never take a flight on Christmas Eve out of London. What were they thinking? And having a school play the same afternoon? What could possibly go wrong?), yet here we are. All I want for Christmas is you and you and you and you. And you. 

 

Or are we dancer

 Dear future hubster,

the expression "dance like nobody's watching" now should be understood as "dance like it's 2020 and you've been stuck in your living room for long enough to carry a pregnancy to term and The Killers are blasting it from Lollapalooza in 2018 and you actually have enough room and lack of other sweaty bodies to freely shake what Mother Nature gave you to shake and also you're not wearing a bra and the remote control is now your own personal microphone".

Do they get royalties for saving the day?

When the hardest part is over we'll be here

Dear future hubster, 

hang in there. I'm saying this to you so I don't have to say it to myself. 

Hang in there, because there is an end in sight. It's not as near as Frankie said it, but there is some light. I don't know if we even acknowledged the progress that has been made in the past weeks. I for one might or might not have been in tears seeing Maggie Keenan getting her shot. Tears of hope certainly, but not tears of relief. Tears of anticipation, anxiety, cabin fever, uncertainty, lack of trust.

For all the things we couldn't do externally, this year, for many of us, has been severe labour on the inside. Too much to think about, too many things to question, nobody to give answers, and when they do we don't believe them anyway. 

Grief - anticipatory, real -, misery competition, guilt, loss of perspective, loss of appetite, circles to go around in. Anger, jealousy, resentment towards those who weren't there. Anger, jealousy, resentment towards those who were there. Mood swings, crazy dreams, K-drama marathons.

Just writing these makes me want to lie down. If you've felt like you're dragging your body from the kitchen to the living room and back at any point this year, you're not alone. If you've felt like nothing has meaning anymore, and you couldn't think of anything to look forward to, you're not alone. If you were hiding from the people you love the most, if you felt unheard, unseen, not understood, not cared for enough, stretched too thin - you're not alone.

And that really is the trick. If you're reading this, you're not alone. And if you're reading this, we are both still alive. In times like this, it's no small feat. If you're lucky like me, and most of your loved ones have been spared so far, and you're clenching your fists and jaw wanting so bad that they will continue being spared and healthy, I'm with you. It feels like that last hour of a long bus ride, or a transatlantic flight, if you remember those - it feels longer than any other hour of the journey. Time is not only a social construct, it's also perceived very subjectively. The coming few months might feel longer than all of this year has. 

It sucks, I know. 

That's why I keep saying, hang in there. A few more incredibly long months, at least half of them with very little sunlight, a few hundred more takeout dinners, underwhelming online workout sessions, solo birthdays to go. After that, there will be colleagues who have legs, friends we can hug, movies not in our living rooms. 

There will be life. There will be love.

Just hang in there.