2020

There is a time in everyone’s life when the heart and mind go on a standstill — a situation so surreal that the senses can’t even fathom it. The complete collapse of a fixed cosmic order for instance; the death of a loved one, a heartbreak or a killer pandemic.

We’re certainly having a lot of that this year and here we are, only on our fourth month.

It’s as if 2020 is all about running the gauntlet, where we are all prisoners who have to make a dash between two rows of soldiers as they strike out and attack us.

Not everyone will survive and those who make it to 2021 will no doubt be the lucky ones.

Initially, the year marked the beginning of a brand-new decade, a new lease on life. But four months on and we’ve already seen a stretch of bad events -- wildfires that ravaged Australia, the fall of a Ukrainian jet, the Taal Volcano rumblings, a nationalist rampage in Delhi that left 50 dead, the death of Kobe Bryant, and now the coronavirus disease 2019 or COVID-19 which has no doubt disrupted the world on a scale comparable only to the Great Depression and World War II.

Here at home, Metro Manila has become one giant empty capital region with all the grim reminders of the times: empty white coffins warning people to stay home; crematoriums bursting at the seams with bodies of the dead; hospital workers getting sick; and dark, empty buildings which were ones bustling with life.

What an eerily quiet world we woke up to.

As if these aren’t enough, we have our own tragic stories in our personal lives, making the year even darker than it already is.

Clarity of vision

In ophthalmology, 2020 means clarity or sharpness of vision and amidst all the disasters, the year 2020 is giving us exactly that — the lens with which to see what is really important for us.

Businesses write off 2020

Even the country’s billionaires have been jolted out of their usual mindsets and have come to realize what matters most.

Philippine billionaire Enrique Razon, for instance, said he has written off 2020 as the pandemic slams the global e,conomy.

“The only thing that counts now is defeating the virus,” he said in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

Razon’s behemoth port operator International Container Terminal Services Inc. is present in 19 countries and around 35 cities around the world — from Manila to Madagascar.

Volumes at ICTSI likely fell 10 to 15 percent last month and are expected to decline further in April, he said.

His casino hotel Bloomberry is closed because of the Luzon-wide lockdown.

“We will have to tally up the losses later on,” he said.

Life versus money

Indeed, the concerns of businesses are secondary at this point.

Tycoon Ramon Ang said if he has to choose between life and money, he would choose life.

“At this point, what is more important are lives, not money. We can make money again, but life once you lose it, it’s gone forever. So between life and money, I’d choose life,” Ang said in a recent interview with CNN.

We are all choosing life above anything else nowadays and 2020 has taught us that.

Heroes versus villains

But of the many realizations the year is showing us, may we never forget another important lesson — how we will survive as a country will depend on the leaders we have.

This crisis presents an opportunity for all of us to see who the good leaders are. If they do what is right, they will be heroes.

We really need heroes these days who will guide us through our lives this 2020.

We can’t have a villain president who will just keep us awake with late night ramblings and incoherent messages and endless attacks on personalities who criticize the government. We need to hear where we are in the war against the virus. We need heroes to count on for our survival in this difficult time.

If we are to survive this crisis, we need to realize the importance of serious, sincere and capable leaders and we need to put a stop to personality-based politics.

In the end, there are very few things that will matter: life over money, love over loss and heroes over villains.

Let’s make the right choice if and when we survive this crisis. These are the lessons we are learning from this year of the bizarre and the strange, and the painfully extraordinary.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com