The coming of a new decade is highly anticipated as it is ushering in a fresh start for everyone. The latter decades of 20th century had been largely identifiable by way of fashion and music style. Why a certain trend is almost always contained in a ten-year cycle may be modern world’s little fun trick.
New wave music went off with the ‘80s as grunge and alternative rock arrived. The Beatles was over when John Lennon expressed his decision to leave the group in late 1969. Thus, the ‘60s the band so dominated came to an abrupt end—but somewhat on cue for the next era.
The 1959 plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper was likewise a death knell to the ‘50s; the tragedy lamented in Don McLean’s “American Pie” right through the line “the day the music died.”
The Roaring ‘20s or Jazz Age was a time of lavish parties perfectly pictured by Scott Fitzgerald in his novel The Great Gatsby. It was the time of Prohibition and bootlegged liquor meant that people who knew where to acquire some forbidden drink and wanted to party all night may end up drunken or dead.
The St. Valentine’s Day massacre allegedly masterminded by the infamous Al Capone somewhat signaled the end of that period, and then as if for emphasis, the Crash of 1929 made sure that the next decade would be marred by Great Depression and atrocities by German Nazis and Imperial Japan. A depressed songwriter in the 1930s wrote “Gloomy Sunday,” dubbed the Hungarian Suicide Song.
Here comes the 2020s and it’s time to come up with, pun intended, a clear vision and make it happen within the next ten years.
The first two of the third millennium brought the Internet and social media. The mass marketing of smartphones affected the way we interact and see the world, with gadgets becoming windows to the rest of the planet. Ironically, it somehow alienated ourselves from the ones within our reach. How many times have we seen people glued down on their phones when they are supposed to be talking to each other? Many of us crave attention from people who are at the moment somewhere as we almost ignore those practically seated beside us.
Nevertheless, I welcome the new year and new decade with so much hope, perhaps with a lot more hope than the previous ones. I wish to get through this in high spirit and rightly empowered.
At the back of my head, I feel like it’s going to be hard. But yes, it’s a kind of new beginning. And I look forward to making the most out of it.
I wish to survive it all.
(Note: The author wrote this personal piece on Dec. 31, 2019—the day the World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted of what would be called COVID-19. Like most people around the world anticipating the new year revelry that same day, he had yet to hear about the news.)