Dear West Boca Class of 2020, 

In a situation where a glass is half full and half empty, one must choose to be an optimist or a pessimist. However, there are times when the negatives clearly outweigh the positives. These times, when every piece of negativity suggests we take up a despairing attitude, are the times that define who we are. For the seniors, it has been extremely difficult to live with the uncertainty that recent circumstances have presented. We share a common feeling in the pit of our stomachs, a feeling of angst. We were on our fourth way around the track, about to finish the mile, taking our final strides and giving our absolute everything to cross the finish line. Sacrificing our sanity, our sleep schedule, our social life, everything with the podium finish in mind. And just as we could taste victory on the tip of our tongues, coach blows the whistle, “alright we’re done here, everybody go home”. There is a lack of closure that has surrounded every aspect of our lives and the worst part is the way many of us feel like we’ve taken these aspects for granted in hindsight of such a disaster. Many of us can’t remember our last moments as athletes for our school, as we didn’t know it would be our last and didn’t take the time to soak it in. We can’t remember the last laugh we had at practice or the last memory from a game, everything ended so abruptly we didn’t even have time to process it. But as we sit in our houses, mostly bored out of our mind, we have the time to think. We have time to process what we are leaving behind and in this time I’ve tried to think from the other perspective, from the optimists point of view. When a team wins a championship in major league sports, there is generally a parade. This parade celebrates the blood, sweat, and tears contributed by the team and the sacrifices made are commemorated by the city of the team who wins. Us losing the last few months of school is comparable to a team battling through adversity, winning the championship, lifting the trophy, then having the parade cancelled. Although the celebration was over before it started, we still arrived at our destination, we still raised the trophy triumphantly. I’ve also asked myself: is there a way to make this seemingly negative series of events have positive future ramifications ? There are two possibilities for the way we will reminisce on the year 2020. We will either think in contempt of what could have been a good senior year or we will look back at 2020 as the year that everything changed. As society goes into isolation we have noticed multiple positive consequences. The air is no longer filled with smog in China, the water in the canals of Venice is crystal clear, carbon dioxide emissions are drastically lower around the world. The ideal that so much good can come from something so bad proves one thing: the way seniors have taken our best memories for granted is representative of the way humans have taken our planet for granted. The only difference is it is not too late for us to save the earth. If we can reduce unnecessary consumption, cut down on pollution, and take better care of our earth, 2020 will not be a year to forget. It will be a year to remember for the rest of time, 2020 will be the year that we turned society around and saved the world!

Sincerely,

Natan Solomon and The Bullseye Staff