We are a year removed since what we called normal life ceased.

A full year. 12 months. 365 days.

COVID has directly and indirectly changed the trajectory of 10s of millions of lives — all in the span of a single year.

The announcement from the President last week that all Americans would have access to the vaccine staring May 1 resulted in an interesting tableau of reactions.

Social timelines were soon filled with exuberant proclamations about making up for lost time.

“Making up for lost time” is an interesting phrase. It’s a phrase and a mindset that plays into a false sense of pleasure and possibility.

The inevitability paradox strikes again. We have a mental health crisis coming — so we hear.

The inevitability paradox posits that because of (x) happening, (y) will happen and we have to accept it. But, there are things we could do to deal with (y). The paradox is, if we just did (y) in the first place because it’s good for us anyway, (x) never would have happened.

As the events of 6 January unfolded and in the days since, I have gravitated to the words and acts of both John F. and Robert F. Kennedy. It's clear from the insurgency on the Capitol that America is not working for everyone. Whether we fully understand the insurgents position or not, there's a dangerous imbalance.

2020 was by any measure a bad year for humanity. In the United States, we bore witness to intense disruption to the social fabric of our nation. And then, during the first full week of 2021, the citadel of American democracy, the U.S. Capitol, was invaded by U.S. Citizens during an active session of Congress.

If our mind has reached a point of identifying an extraordinary behavior — good or bad — we should recognize something remarkable has happened.