RICKY BUCHANAN
(They/them)
18 June 2021
Wurundjer, Woi Wurrung Country
Dear Future Ricky,
You know how I think I’ll remember this time? Like a dream.
Like how for me the time before I was disabled when I could move around freely feels like a dream.
Like how remembering when I was growing up and having sprinklers on for hours every night just to spray water around so the lawn would be green feels like it must have been a dream.
Like how every time we’re in lockdown, the times out of lockdown feel like they were a dream. And vice versa.
Like how the time before COVID-19 when we could just hug and kiss and let people in the house without worrying feels like a dream.
I think in 20 years, this time – 2020, 2021 – will feel like a dream. I don’t think COVID-19 will be gone, but I think everything will be so different that this time will feel like a dream – we’ll be amazed at how small the effects of climate change were in 2020. We’ll be stunned by how wasteful and profligate we were with things that weren’t recyclable or reusable or environmentally safe. We won’t really remember what it was like before the first COVID-19 vaccines and treatments that actually worked.
I don’t know what else will be different. Predicting things seems like a sick joke right now, right after everything has changed in ways that we broadly saw coming (in the sense that we knew pandemics and climate change were on the horizon) but also did not expect at all (in the sense that nobody thought 2020 would be the year of the enormous bushfires and COVID-19).
What I hope is that that we also remember this time was the time when everything reached an inflection point and citizens pushed enough that governments finally started to do enough to rein in climate change, to close inequality gaps along all the axis, to make sure that public health is dealt with on a global scale, to make things better.
What I fear is that none of that happens and we keep driving at full speed towards many cliffs. I guess you – future time person you – knows better than me.