You know, I really thought the 2020s were going to be it. After a pretty lacklustre 2019, I was bounding on a wave of positivity into the new year, convinced of the excitement and joy and prosperity that not just 2020 but the whole decade would bring. Things took a bit of a turn, you could say.

So, maybe I’d set myself up to fail as it was. Admittedly, the 2020s felt significant with the age I’m at for being the point in my life when All The Stuff was probably going to Start Happening. For me and my peers, this is the decade (traditionally) of the weddings and the babies and the career-establishing jumps. But if I’m being totally honest, I’d also pinned a lot of that hope just on the fact that it was the twenties again – it’s no secret around here that I’m a bit of a nostalgic.

History and human life is cyclical. What goes around comes around, whether it’s bell-bottoms being all the rage again or the world being thrown into crisis in the midst of a global pandemic. We’ve been here before. Not in my lifetime, not in the memory of anyone still alive today. But it’s time like this that history can, if not quite teach us, perhaps provide some semblance of reassurance and hope for the years to come.

When people talk about the Roaring Twenties, it lands with this idea that the entire decade was one, ten year long bathtub gin fuelled dance party set to a jazz soundtrack. Parts of the culture began early on: women gained the right to vote in the US in 1920 and Prohibition laws kicked off the decade. But in the early part of the decade, the world was still recovering mentally and financially from a double-whammy of attacks: World War I and the Spanish flu. Before the fast-paced economic and social upturn of the 1920s would kick off, there were two years of depression to endure through 1920-21.

It was only as the effects of the recession started to ease off and the economy took an upturn that we start to see something akin to the Fitzgerald-type image of the 1920s that we know better. The preceding events explain a lot of the mentality of the Roaring Twenties. Coming out of a period of conflict, uncertainty and death, a lust for living is hardly surprising. Both the war and the pandemic had disproportionately taken the lives of young adults and for those left, the losses would still be fresh.

Knowing how quickly it all could be pulled out from underneath one’s feet, it is no wonder that people and society as a whole seemed to treat everyday as though it was their last. Technology and the arts boomed, each new innovation swinging the wavering economy steadily upwards. By 1927, more and more people owned cars, giving them the freedom to travel further. Charles Lindbergh completed the first non-stop solo transatlantic airplane flight and everyday people begun to imagine that they might one day be able to take to the skies. Radios broadcast to homes across the world, right into people’s living rooms. The first sound film was released. Dance clubs became popular locales of entertainment.

A taste of the ‘20s party, back in 2016…

For us, what comes next? In recent days, there’s been an uptick in the occasional optimistic headline. Italy is set to announce a lockdown exit strategy. Children have been sent back to school in Denmark. Here in Ontario, they believe we’ve hit the peak with numbers far lower than feared.

I read the headlines and, for the first time in this whole thing, felt a different kind of fear. Having finally settled into something of a steady, comfortable routine at home, coming into week six here, the idea of more change is alarming – even when that change would be more towards what two months ago I would have considered normal. I don’t know what I do when this is over. I lost my job last week and the market is likely to be scarce in the coming months.

To ease those concerns, of which I can do basically nothing until we get there and see what the world looks like at the other end, I started thinking a bit further ahead. What comes next?

Things will get worse before they get better. We already know we’re heading into a deep pit of a recession and there is only so quickly we will bounce back from that. But, further down the line, could we be looking at a hark back to a previous era, a true Roaring 2020s? Booms in technology are such a part of our daily life that it’s hard to imagine the same kind of mass-market life-changing innovations that they experienced a century ago. Personally, what I’ve got my eye on is in the people. The Roaring Twenties were transformative for style and music – and lifestyle.

We, as a society, are in a rush. That’s one thing that’s become apparent in all of this, as the world sits down and looks about themselves and realises they can’t remember the last time they were this still. The last time they spent half a day reading a book inside or making a jigsaw puzzle. Taking a step back to appreciate the smaller moments in life can be powerful to our way of thinking and living. To not take for granted that which we have but to embrace it fully.

I’d be surprised if we didn’t come into the mid 2020s without a similar kind of mindset, a lust for life. A fresh focus on what (or who) is important to us and how we make the most of that in whatever time we have on this planet.

There is one other notable difference between now and then. The mentality of the 1920s had people thinking primarily for themselves. Through the current crisis, we’ve seen people in all parts of the world step forward to help those who need it most. We can’t afford to lose that way of thinking at the other end of this. We are at our best when we work together – somewhere along the way, I think we lost that. When we let others fall behind, we all fall behind. We have to keep caring for one another and we have to keep caring for the planet we call our home.

We can come out of this stronger. Better days will come. But even the Lost Generation of the 1920s didn’t get their party without going through the hard days first.

P.S. If you’re interested in the history of it all, you might be interested to know I’m speaking on a panel tomorrow (Sun Apr 26th, 12pm EST) on writing historical fiction as part of Interlude Press’s Tiny Book Fest. You can watch on Zoom or on their Facebook page – check interludepress.com for details.

As part of the book fest, they’re also running a promotion at store.interludepress.com – all print books are 25% off + free US shipping with code TBF2020 or 45% off ebooks (automatically applied at checkout). This promotion ends tomorrow so get in there now!

The Birth of an Era: Not with a Roar but with a Whimper