What kind of year has it been for you, for our global community? For many, it has been an “annus horribilis,” to borrow from what Queen Elizabeth II said of 1992. (Chuck and Di divorced. Windsor Castle burned. Your Majesty, we felt your pain.) People have lost loved ones, jobs, homes and their health to the coronavirus. Their loss and grief are incalculable, as are our feelings of inadequacy in trying to help them.
For others, it’s been “the best of times, the worst of times,” to quote another Briton, Charles Dickens. They have not lost their health, loved ones, jobs and homes. Instead they are working from and on their homes, using their extra time to acquire new skills, take up a language, a sport or an art, exercising and losing weight and generally getting their lives in order. They’ve made money in the market, as tech and pharma stocks help buoy the Dow, and have even earned honors. Or maybe they haven’t endured any losses but they’re struggling with a number of challenges, like the kids’ schooling.
In any event, it’s hard for them to take much pleasure and pride in their accomplishments and blessings with so much suffering around them — and with the occasional curve ball thrown their way. They’re having what we might call a Novak Djokovic kind of year. You don’t have to know anything about tennis to know that the No. 1-ranked men’s player and reigning Australian Open and Wimbledon champion — Wimbledon was canceled this year, because of the virus — has had one crazy spring and summer. Late in the spring he organized a mini tour of the Balkans to benefit players financially affected by the shutdown only to see the whole thing blow up when he and others tested positive for Covid-19.
Then having won the Western & Southern Open in New York where the United States Tennis Association had decided to play the tournament before the US Open, he was bounced from the latter after a ball he hit in frustration Sunday caught a lineswoman in the throat, sending her to the hospital as a precaution. Just like that he was out of the tournament, his ranking points and money earned there scrubbed and, because he skipped the requisite news conference, he was fined as well. It’s a big deal because with 17 Slam wins, he’s in pursuit of Roger Federer’s record 20. (Federer sat out the tournament, rehabbing from knee surgery. Rafael Nadal, the reigning US Open champ, decided not to play.)
Those of us who have seen officials deliberately abused by other players may sympathize with Djokovic, who at least had the guts to come to New York and put it all on the line. Still, we are as responsible for our fits of pique and accidents as we are for our intentional actions. With so much at stake, perhaps next time he’ll control his temper.
Djokovic’s best of times, worst of times doesn’t amount to the proverbial hill of beans in the scheme of world events. Fires raging in Lesbos’ refugee camp and the Pacific states. The pandemic heating up again in Europe and showing no signs of abating in the Americas. Businesses and schools struggling to reopen. Everywhere, man is divided from nature. That’s how we got into this virus mess. And he is divided from himself.
In his latest revelatory tome, “Rage,” Bob Woodward quotes President Donald J. Trump — on tape — as saying that he downplayed the virus so as not to cause a panic. Fair enough. But there’s a great deal of difference between downplaying something so as not to cause a paralyzing or stampeding panic while quietly working the problem and downplaying something merely to gain political advantage for yourself. In World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt slowly, carefully prepared isolationist America for the war he knew we would inevitably have to fight.
Trump could’ve done the same with the virus, mixing Roosevelt’s optimism with resolve and purpose. But he didn’t. As a result, we’re on our way to 200,000 dead.
And that’s the way the ball bounces.