NEW ORLEANS — When you look back at 2020, how would you sum up the year in just one word? People answered that very question in City Park Thursday morning by writing down one word on a whiteboard.
"Everything that you did got canceled, huh?" one dad said to his daughter as she wrote 'inconvenient.'
Others wrote challenging, love, messy, distant, home, raucous, and divisive.
It's certainly been a year of distance.
"Because of social distancing," said one boy who wrote 'distant.'
It's been challenging, a word two people wrote, as many of us experienced loss.
"Just a lot of tough stuff going on, personally, professionally I'm a nurse. I lost my dad this year," said one woman who wrote 'challenging.'
She recognizes though that there has been good this year too as many have been forced to recognize what they do have.
"In that there's also been a lot of good," she said.
One man wrote 'apocalyptic.'
"Geez what have we had? We had birth, death, pandemic, plague, hurricanes, multiple hurricanes," he said. "There's no other way to describe it."
It's certainly been eventful, another word someone wrote.
"Cause there were a lot of things happening. Some of them were good, some of them were bad," she said.
One man wrote 'different' as the year has impacted us all.
"I don't think any of us have been through anything like this," he said.
It's affected us all differently and many have had a year of growth.
"Freedom," one woman visiting from Washington said as she wrote the word. "I've gone through a divorce this last year and it's been a good thing. I've learned a lot about myself. This is actually my 'untie the knot' vacation."
"I like challenging, difficult, eventful, certainly memorable," one man read off words on the board.
2020 is surely that, memorable. Now, in just hours, what's described as a messy, different, and historic year, will be a memory, leaving us with lessons and new appreciation we take into 2021.
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