It's been an odd year, but a good one in many ways. There was a time for sorrow, but also for joy. There was a short period of real freedom after what many experienced as a prison of isolation and loneliness, of personal trials. There will be joy again once society opens up. With each closure of society, we learn perhaps not to take our personal freedoms for granted. One can only hope.
Within that time window of real freedom, I managed a long sought-after trip to New York to visit loved ones. I knew that I would not make it through another winter without having seen them. Each trip to New York fills up my heart and soul with memories. I have those memories to live on during the long cold winters. They keep me warm because they're made of love.
Our personal freedoms come and came with a cost. Some families experienced that cost more intimately and more seriously than others. This past year it seemed to me that suddenly I knew more people who got Covid, as well as people who knew people that got Covid. One of those who got sick died recently and he was in his 50s with no underlying health issues.
Some people, no matter what evidence they are given, will continue to deny the existence of a virus and of the value of a vaccine against that virus. Some people will always attempt to put themselves first, no matter the cost, instead of putting the good of society first. I imagine FDR faced the same problems trying to get the USA back on track after the Great Depression. Some people always know what's best for others, and even when it's not, they insist that it is. Some people are hypocrites; they tell their followers not to take the vaccine because to do so would take away their personal freedom, but they themselves have taken the vaccine.
I thought I could never again be surprised by the antics of Donald Trump. But there he was on television, interviewed by Candace Owens, pushing others to take the vaccine. For once I agreed with him. For once I thought, he makes sense. Many of his 'followers' booed him. But let's see. Perhaps in six months he'll be saying that his interview with Candace Owens was fake news. You never know with him.
Here in Norway, the results of grant applications to the major granting agencies were divulged. For the most part, the same people who always get money, got more money in order to grow their already large research groups even larger. But there was one conspicuous absence that made me happy to see. That person, who shall remain unnamed, deserves to experience what many other good (unfunded) scientists have experienced for a decade or more, that no matter how hard they tried, they did not get funding. This particular scientist has always dissed those unfunded scientists as dead weight. He never thought twice about publicly humiliating them. And now perhaps he is dead weight himself. I have two thoughts about this--there is a God (thank you, God), and karma is a bitch. It may be unkind of me, but he has caused untold suffering to others. He deserves what he gets.
The bishops in the Lutheran church here in Norway criticized the government for the tight restrictions on how many people could attend church services during Christmas, particularly in light of the fact that the shopping centers were not fettered with such restrictions. They have a point. All of the churches here have limitations on how many people could attend services; they've been in place for a month or more. Christmas is not just about buying gifts for others, as nice as that is. It is also about allowing people to worship God and honor their faith. I applaud the churches here for the job they have done in terms of following the government regulations and instituting hygienic practices. They cannot be criticized at all for this.
In the midst of the chaos that is society at present, I have felt peace and joy. I retired this year in order to honor the dreams I have of pursuing my writing and publishing what I write. I want to finish what I've started. Retiring has brought me peace--peace of mind and peace of soul. I am grateful that I was able to do it now, without having to worry about not being able to afford to do so. My husband and I are blessed and I am reminded of that every day. I am grateful. We have a granddaughter who is two years old and a joy to be with. She is a reminder that life continues to move forward and that there is trust in the future.
What will this century bring? I think about what the twentieth century brought us in the way of new technologies. Many of them were predicted in the sci-fi novels that I love, the ones that I read already as a young adult. I wonder if this century will figure out time travel? Will wormholes play a role in that? Or will something else that has not yet been discovered?
Life is about learning throughout one's life. We learn something new every day. It sounds banal when people say it, but it's not at all a banal experience. Our brains are miracles of nature. The study of the brain must be fascinating, the last great frontier of science, one I want to read more about. When it comes to learning, I still have a sense of awe in the face of all there is to learn, and in the face of wondrous things a sense of magic.
Nature continues to call to me each day, continues to remind me that beauty is all around us, in the simplest and tiniest of things. I pick up a fistful of earth, and as it runs through my fingers I wonder, what is earth? What is it made of, this substance that nurtures life? Nature is a miracle, the way it incorporates life and death in an almost cyclical fashion. Dead plants become earth and nurture new life. A garden has taught me that. In that way one could almost say that there is no death, only different forms of life. I have so many questions. I doubt that there will be fewer as I get older. Nature co-exists with us, most times peacefully, other times not. We cannot control it; we have learned to tame parts of it, those parts that give us food and shelter. But we live on a planet in a solar system in a universe. It strikes me as it does many others, just how unbelievable it is that our planet sustains life, whereas the others do not, at least not in the same way as ours does. We are particular, special, singled out. Why? Random particularity, or does God have a hand in it? Some of my recent reading (Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, which I can highly recommend) discusses some of these aspects, providing some answers but mostly generating more questions. Man's search for meaning--who am I and why am I here? How did the earth as we know it come to be? Is there a God who stands behind it all? These are questions that occupy both scientists and the faithful. Rovelli's book asks 'What is time', among other questions. He discusses spacetime and gravity, order, blurring, and entropy. He dismantles 'time' as we know it and then builds it up again. But he, like so many other physicists, doesn't have the answers. That's fine, I don't need him to provide them. I reflect on his viewpoints and on what he's written. It expands my views of the world and of faith.
Science and faith go hand in hand for me. They complement each other. There are bridges between them and as time goes on, the number of bridges will likely increase, not decrease. If the new James Webb space telescope can eventually see out to the far ends of the universe, back to our origin, back to the Big Bang, what then? What is beyond that? Indeed, what and/or who exists there? I have a feeling that our language will fall short when that time comes.
