Great Expectations for 2022

We were used to the calendar pages following each other like natural steps as the years went by. However, the pandemic has transformed the concept of time by flooding it with uncertainty. 2022, therefore, is a year of expectations.

Of health expectations, because we expect COVID, in its different varieties, to disappear from our lives. In addition, because we expect our governments to show the analytical and informative capacity, which, with honorable exceptions such as New Zealand or Finland, has been conspicuous by its absence.

Of economic expectations, because we look forward to the recovery of productive sectors in most countries: trade, tourism and leisure, among many other areas of the economy. Today, we can bet on challenges but we have no certainties.

Of professional expectations, particularly for those who have seen their work capacity or their very position transformed. The pandemic has closed companies and their productive chain of jobs and taxes. Countries with more developed social policies, such as the United States and Central Europe, have established substantial resources for the recovery of business activity but every corner is precarious.

Of expectations in personal and social life. We are under the notion of a world that is different in its way of being. We have become accustomed to the simple and practical rules of health, but not to a way of life where coexistence and mobility are necessarily conditioned.

Psychiatrists and psychologists have worked Saturdays and Sundays because of the urgent needs that have arisen in these fields. The attention to each individual as a true human being should be the expectation with more capacity to establish certainties.

Of political expectations because we have perceived that many political instances were light years away from the harsh reality, more concerned with statistical support to maintain votes than to support citizens with information, healthcare and social assistance.

Of educational expectations, because the face-to-face form of education, which since the Peripatetic Greeks has been the most obvious way of leading human beings to knowledge and wisdom, was disrupted for days. Schools and universities reduced, by necessity, their capacity to be houses of study. Digital platforms contributed to not losing school years but could not replace face-to-face education.

Of entrepreneurial expectations, because those expectations that died should be revisited and resuscitated, those that suffered quick wounds, should go to the hospital of analysis for healing and those that remained standing or grew to contribute to the business world to regain their vigor.

COVID unscrupulously pierced health, but also the economy, politics, society, psychology, education, business and work. It has undoubtedly been the most powerful crisis since the Second World War and like every conflagration; it will be a drag on post-war times.

The great expectation for 2022, in short, is to wake up from a world beaten and numbed by the pandemic to a universe in which it is necessary to wake up quickly and start working efficiently; a universe in which each and every one of us is responsible for rebuilding the foundations damaged by the virus.