There’s a meme or joke that, on reflection, is likely rooted in some sexism. It’s about how many people (perhaps depending on generation) find ‘LIVE LAUGH LOVE’ (or equivalent) slogans in home décor, the ultimate faux pas in style.

Perhaps it’s my age (31) and the year that has been (2020) that has recently changed my perspective on LIVE LAUGH LOVE. I’ve come to realise that ‘Live Laugh Love’ is an okay thing. It’s actually unequivocally good, because who doesn’t want those things?

Live? Sure, okay.

Laugh? Truly, what else can you do sometimes.

Love? Nice.

‘Live, laugh, love’ for me, has entered the Pantheon of ‘At This Point, Sure Why Not’.

I’m not actually cruelly wringing my hands over the slogans on peoples’ home décor, but I’ve been reminded of it when I think about how 2020 has been the year of the slogan (among many, many other things).

Be kind.

E waka heke noa.

2020 dragged our team of five million into isolation and claustrophobia, and insisted we come to terms with uncertainty. Viruses care little for hubris or being kind, and so it was an exercise in coming to terms with our smallness in the face of a force of nature.

The anxiety of the entire country was palpable. I used to imagine a world in chaos as being something that involved zombies. It turned out to be fights over toilet paper and unrequited passions for sourdough. Clearly some handled it better than others. Some soldiered on with a slightly unhealthy disassociation (it me!), while others drifted toward the conspiracy theorist end of the spectrum.

There is certainly no one way to manage the anxiety of having the world turned upside down and 2020 is ripe for study – as it is, studies on the new social realities in which we work, live, and socialise in this Post-Covid environment have already started churning out. But what became very obviously clear is that, for all the blanket slogans to try and unite our country – the empirical truth is that we are simply not all in this ‘waka’ together.

Viruses care little for hubris or being kind, and so it was an exercise in coming to terms with our smallness in the face of a force of nature.

That there is inequality in our country is not a particularly new nugget of information. While different people bend over backwards to find justifications and cruelties to maintain this status quo, it’s disappointing that we’re starting to develop a national identity in which we blanket ourselves and our inequities in naïve optimism and slogans.

Be kind.

Our leader told us to be kind and then also denied beneficiaries any sort of hope that they might see an increase of living above the poverty level for Christmas.

Be kind.

While massive New Zealand companies took millions in wage subsidies, made a profit, and appear to have little inclination to return their tax-payer funded cushion.

Our government responded with a request these companies ‘do the right thing’. If only the government had any sort of… power to make this happen, much in the same way I would likely end up with an enormous bill lest I underreported my income to keep my entitlements as a single parent.

Recently, the British High Commissioner told an unsettling truth – that New Zealand talks a lot of s***. Scandinavian aspirations with an American approach to tax, she said. I can’t disagree.

We rely on our slogans and marketing to cover the fact that where it matters most – New Zealand has not been very kind. If we want the credit for doing what was necessary to get through the worst of COVID, we should also be brave enough to accept COVID also brought to light the fractures in our ‘team of five million’.

Our leader told us to be kind and then also denied beneficiaries any sort of hope that they might see an increase of living above the poverty level for Christmas.

I’m loath to reflect on 2020 and ‘hope’ for 2021 with criticism that for some may appear unpatriotic. If it's optimism for progress that we hope for in 2021, I’m reminded of a recent journal article by Joe Davidson who reflected on W.E.B. Dubois’ perception of ‘progress’ in the context of racism. Progress is ‘ugly’. It’s confronting and uncomfortable. It is…

…a looping conception of time that involves shuffling between the disappointments of the past and utopian hopes for the future.

A little closer to home, the whakataukī; ka mua, ka muri; to step into the future with our gaze fixed on the past. The past does not need to just mean the colonial past. It also includes what we’ve failed to do in the last five years. Like Dubois’ slightly more pessimistic outlook suggests, I’m personally not unprepared for disappointment. The shuffling between hope and disappointment is viscerally accurate. But I’d like to continue hoping that change is coming. We managed to upend the social and political realities to adjust the ways we work, live, and socialise when COVID hit. It seems that perhaps we simply lack the courage to back ourselves and our slogans up.

In the meantime, for all the functionality of kindness 2020 has brought about, perhaps ‘Live Laugh Love’ is an arguable strong candidate for the 2021 national slogan.