Exactly a year ago today, I lamented the pandemic and imagined it all an April Fool’s Day prank—how naive my perspective was back then. Now I wonder: what have we all learned in the prolonged time that is this past year?

Or put a different way, if you were aware then of all you know now, what would you caution? That the “other side” or “other” learn its lessons?

I sometimes struggle to remain vigilant against such thinking. A year is such an incredibly long time (perhaps this year was a little extra long)—for the next year, what do we hope to learn, to achieve, and to build upon as a society?