A Choice to Make
Art/Debanhi Gutierrez.
By Debanhi Gutierrez
It was January 1, 2020. Fireworks crackled over the Las Vegas Strip, brilliant unlike ever before. Colors streaked everywhere, gold and scarlet. I watched the fireworks sparkle over the clouds and fade away into the renewed sky, excitement electrified in the air. A whole new year, a whole new decade was starting out before me. Like everyone else, I believed 2020 was going to be my year, a year of beauty and abundance. I never expected the different, frightening reality that waited in this long year.
In the veil of cool January air, my excitement dulled. I learned about a mysterious illness that was spreading in Wuhan, China. Suddenly it felt something was wrong. I became alarmed but change hadn’t occurred yet. Life went on as normal in January—as normal as it would be for a long time to come.
The days of a “normal world” were counted.
The virus began appearing more in the news. My parents mentioned it. My friends said they heard about it too. A few students on campus brought it up before classes started on cloudy February days. Slowly the normality of the world unraveled, like thin thread from a spool. Questions were asked everywhere.
Was this virus just like the flu? Who was most at risk?
The mysterious virus was named COVID-19, and it would change those plans written on my calendar. It would interrupt life in literally every way possible.
It would make 2020 a confusing, frightening year for all of us.
The virus was spreading.
March flipped everything upside down, sealing away the memory of a normal world into the depths of my mind. Suddenly there’s no food at the store, no meat at the nearby Smith’s by my home. Everyone is stocking. Everyone is panicking. There’s a chaotic ambient lingering in the air as the world spins. The change came so fast it felt like lightning struck and changed everything in this world in a blink of an eye.
Businesses shut down. University campus shuts down. A new normal begins.
We’re then advised to wear mask; it protects us from others and ourselves from COVID- 19 transmission. We learned everyone can be infected of COVID-19 and fatality sickened by it. We had to have lockdowns for a while in order to reduce COVID-19 spread.
Refreshing the Google Chrome tab became a morning routine. Trying to see what news had been discovered about COVID-19, how many cases had been recorded where I live, how I can better protect myself.
Information came so fast. It became overwhelming trying to adjust to the sheer speed information came in. It felt like trying to keep up in a marathon on top of trying to survive.
How we chose to use that information would influence our choices. What information we believed would have consequences regardless if what we believed was true or false, whether we knew it was true or false. What we shared online, what we discussed with those we could see. They all had influence on our choices, which would then have consequences that would unfold regardless of our intentions.
In this pandemic, we have been assigned a responsibility: choices.
The choices we made as a whole would either shorten or extend the length of this pandemic.
Some choices would worsen the flames of COVID-19. Choices not thought of carefully, not considered under the scope of a bigger picture in the future tense. When multiplied by a number of people making the same type of choice, it would worsen the situation of COVID-19. They would create smoke for the rest of us, causing us to suffer through the consequences.
Some choices would lessen the flames of COVID-19. Choices taken under consideration, mindful of communities around us and those we live with. When multiplied by a number of people making the same type of choice, it would improve the situation of COVID-19. The choices would bring the hope of normality through an improvement in lower infection rates and lower hospitalizations.
Unlike before, these were choices that in 2019 we would not have thought twice about.
Do we wear our masks when we see our friends?
Do we travel for the holidays?
They’re difficult choices, but this was our new normal. This was our frightening world in 2020. We had to think hard about the choices we were going to make and acknowledge the risks taken with it. Our choices were the backbone of transmission spread.
It wasn’t easy, staying indoors all year. Seeing so many small businesses shut down, unable to survive. Seeing children unable to attend school. Seeing so much sadness and fear everywhere.
And the year passed.
It’s December 31, 2020. I remember how bright 2020 lustered on the calendar pinned to my wall. A whole new year, a whole new decade, was starting out before my eyes. But excitement waned, diming like fading lights. Even now, the fireworks don’t sparkle as bright as they did a year ago. It’s as if the world has fallen into monochrome filter, static noise like a broken television.
What awaits us in 2021 seems to be the question on everyone’s mind.
But we still have a choice—the choice to have hope.
Over the flames of fear, our hope is what will give us strength.
Hope this pandemic will end soon. Hope we will return to normality soon.
Hope. It isn’t just a feeling at this point.
It’s a choice. It’s a choice we have to make after the difficult obstacles of 2020 in order to grow stronger, learning from the past and fixing the present for a better future. It’s a choice we must embrace, hoping the situation will improve and our old normal will resume.
For our frontline workers, who are doing everything they can to protect those in need.
For those who have passed away because of COVID-19, who will be remembered.
For our loved ones, who we wish to stay well.
And for ourselves, in which we must have hope that there will be a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
Debanhi Gutierrez is a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Honors College. She is bilingual and graduated high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. She is studying marketing and expects to graduate in 2022. In her free time, Debanhi enjoys drawing and writing.