Knowing There’s Always a Way to Bounce Back - Nathan de la Cruz
Hope Newspaper by Fevered Sleep, Tower Hamlets 2021. Photo by Shingi Rice
We're creating a Hope Newspaper which will be distributed in our local area, Tower Hamlets, in East London. We spoke to a number of people we met in the street about how 2020 was for them, and what they had to be hopeful about.
Honestly, I'm going to try and say this as genuinely as possible. 2020, it's been a tough year. I think it goes without saying. I’m quite a home person, so I don’t mind being at home. But coming from a place of like, it’s hard for other people, like it took me some time to realise it’s not really free time.
Everyone’s still working remotely and stuff. I’m only starting to really see the mental implications it’s had on other people as well. Especially on people like, I don’t have a kid, but for parents.
People are struggling, work in certain industries can’t be done at home, so those people need to go out or they just don’t have jobs. I see both ends.
Lots of my friends are in finance, they’re in corporate jobs, and for them, it’s more like a little holiday away from the office, so I like to just get out there and be grateful for what I do have.
It’s been a tough year, I lost my grandpa, early this year. My wife lost her dad, two months ago and it’s difficult that for the funeral, we couldn’t visit. My grandfather passed away just before the lockdown here and there was always that uncertainty.
I think that’s the best way to explain it, it’s just very uncertain these days. You just don’t know where things are heading. It doesn’t look like it's any closer to any sort of light at the end of the tunnel, it’s more like we just have to start getting used to how things are.
But in a positive light which I always try to spin you gotta take the good and the bad. I think it’s been very much needed because if I reflect on my life before the pandemic, you just forget small things that you forget to be grateful for. Appreciate certain things you know with the time that we have.
I’m from Sydney Australia so my parents are back home and the time difference is quite… Before you just go, go, go working. I’ve spoken to my parents the most this year than I have since moving. That’s thanks to the technology.
You take those moments for granted and now it's like it's really nice in that sense. But, yeah, a lot of things we took for granted in terms of you know just being out in general. That’s not gonna happen, like bars, a lot of it is very surface-level type stuff but you forget that these are times that we can look back at as a memory but also there’s a lot of opportunity for new things to come as well.
Before anything comes that’s good you’ve gotta go through the bad and I do believe that. I think a lot of things are gonna change in terms of how businesses are run, how people communicate.
- Nathan de la Cruz