Floating through my head these days is a Christmas song which starts: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…..everywhere I go….”. There is a sense of giddiness as people are past their second vaccine and they are meeting in person. Plans are being made to return to offices, to travel, to resume where we left off last March.
Before we do that, let’s acknowledge those who went above and beyond any reasonable expectations this year.
Here are my top 5 groups:
5. Congress. Messy and far from perfect, the EILD loans, the PPP, the raised unemployment payments, and the stimulus checks keep this ship from going under. For the first time in my lifetime there is a lot of liquidity for small businesses and more survived than we could have predicted. Now is the time to fix our infrastructure.
4. Los Angeles Regional Food Bank and other food banks. Food insecurity hit families that never would have believed that they were about to go hungry. Those who had money to contribute did, and it save our communities.
3. Vistage Members. Those Vistage dues paid off as they worked together with the wisdom they had gained at Vistage and beyond – supporting each other to make tough decisions, to calm down and pivot. It was unbelievably difficult and exhausting but you did it.
2. Vistage Chairs. My fellow heroes! Wise sage Larry Cassidy, Vistage Chair par excellence told us to stop and look at what we had done this year and pat ourselves on the back. I exhaled. I hadn’t realized how tightly I was holding myself in. Not ready to relax, not sure we were through this.
1.Front line health care workers. Who can say enough thanks to the superheroes. We rang bells and shouted at 8 pm every night for months. And, then we stopped, but they didn’t. The depth of gratitude exceeds any amount of words.
And one more, the vaccine manufacturers who in super human time brought out safe vaccines and saved so many lives. My heart breaks for all we have lost, or who live with continuing fall out from catching COVID.
This week create your own top 5 and acknowledge their contribution. If you run an organization, who stepped up and made a difference such that you are in still in the game this year?
photo of Vistage Members Mercy Steenwyk and Harpal Singh.